


Chasing the Dragon

by maktub



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Minor Character Death, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 12:01:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3767413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maktub/pseuds/maktub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She still remembers what it felt like. Not quite euphoria, but happier than she could remember being in a long time. She wants that again. Why can’t she have that again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing the Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Round 7 of Prompts in Panem. I urge you to be aware of the warnings on this fic, they may be triggering. Thanks to Jessa, as always. Come hang out on tumblr - I'm coalstewart. Hope you enjoy.

The first time he sees her he feels like crying. Not because it’s love or anything. But because he wants to shake her, rip the plastic bag from her pocket and pour its off-white contents down the sink.

 

He’s been here for a while and he can’t remember ever being so angry that someone used. Well, with one obvious exception.

 

Non-judgemental attitudes. That’s what this is all about. That’s why he works here. Because he’s non-judgemental. These people aren’t criminals, they’re victims of an illness, of some broader system that has beat down on them and made life just a little too unbearable to deal with sober.

 

But _goddammit_ why did life have to beat down on her?

 

She’s beautiful, he thinks, taking in the curve of her braid as it drifts over her shoulder, dark hair and dark, olive skin. Her eyes flit nervously around the grey concrete slab of the injecting room and he thinks they might even be the same colour. If only she’d look at him.

 

She shuffles through the door and looks at the cubicles lined up along the left hand side: eight, round tables, three of which are currently occupied. He can hear the hiss of a flame, mutters of _fuck fuck fuck_ as someone taps at the crease of their elbow, _where are you, you li’l fucker?_

 

She looks at one table - the furthest from the door - and then briefly at him, raising her eyebrows in question. _Can I go there?_

 

He wants to tell her no. He wants to tell her that the last thing he needs at 2am after the worst Friday he’s had in years is to be resuscitating her lifeless, overdosing body in the room behind him because the horse she got off the street is mixed with god knows what and fuck is it an inappropriate time to pray?

 

_Dear God,_

 

_Please make this girl’s smack straight. Keep her lungs from collapsing. Show her the dragon. Give her the dragon so she’ll be satisfied and I never have to see her again._

 

_A-fuck it._

 

Instead he smiles, shrugs his shoulders, says “Take a seat, I’ll be with you in a moment.”

 

His hands shake as he tears the needle from its sterile package. He even opens a fresh packet of filters and spoons just in case. An extra precaution.

 

He doesn’t know why he cares so much about this girl. She’s not the first pretty, young thing to walk through that door with an addiction. He’s always said it was hardest seeing the fathers coming in. The mothers.

 

He talks to them. A lot of the nurses don’t. Just sit around and wait for someone to take too much, open packets of sterile needles and hope no one gets violent.

 

But Peeta Mellark, well, he wants to make a difference. He’s chasing his own kind of dragon.

 

He hears an impatient foot tap, takes a calming breath and turns to the girl sitting on a black, plastic chair with a scowl on her face.

 

He puts the items down on the table in front of her, carefully laid out.

 

“I’m Peeta,” he says, “I’ll be over there if you need anything.”

 

‘Over there’ is a chair from which he can see all eight of the cubicles and in which he feels like some kind of fucked up school teacher.

 

_Now kids, first we take the spoon…_

 

She doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him with a hollow gaze. The skin under her eyes is puffy and dark. The cotton of her tshirt droops over her shoulder to reveal that same skin stretched thin over her collarbone.

 

“I can get water, food.” He can give her a hug, too.

 

She purses her lips and drops a plastic bag on to the table. His eyes dart to the powder within.

 

“Do you have a lighter?”

 

He swallows his sigh, “Yeah. Yeah, two seconds.”

 

––––

 

The second time he sees her he hates himself for being a little bit happy.

 

He smiles, hoping she doesn’t resent the fact that he’s trying to say he remembers her, remembers the way her eyes rolled back in relief as she loosened the rubber tubing from her arm, filtered liquid oozing into her veins.

 

He lingers this time after he places down the needle, the freshly unpacked spoon, but after he makes sure she sees him talking to one of the other injectors in the room. It’s not that she’s special. He’s not trying to pick on her or anything. He just likes to get to know people, make them feel comfortable.

 

Y’know, in case he winds up breaking their ribs later as he performs CPR.

 

“Peeta,” he says by way of introduction, holding out a hand. Something flashes in her eyes, eyebrows briefly crinkling.

 

“I remember.”

 

He laughs to cover the awkwardness, “Just checking, I’m pretty easy to forget.”

 

Her lips twitch and he can’t tell if it’s a smile.

 

“I don’t think I caught your name last night?”

 

“Katniss,” she says, flicks the lighter on under the spoon.

 

It’s only when he sits in his chair, analyses her technique, the way her teeth sink into her lip as she clenches and unclenches her fist, that he realises it’s the same lighter he gave her yesterday.

 

––––

 

He pretends he doesn’t notice that she doesn’t come in on his Sunday shift.

 

––––

 

The third time she comes in he decides he’s going to stop being such a chicken.

 

He dreamt about her on his nights away from the centre. Woke up disoriented and had to call the centre to ask if anyone had OD’d, just had a funny feeling, but it had only been an older homeless guy in the area who they’d all been worried about for weeks so they got on top of it pretty quickly.

 

Not Katniss.

 

Whatever it is that’s brought her to the centre of his attention, Peeta decides he’s just going to go with it. Maybe it’s his instincts. He remembers one of the head nurses at the hospital where he’d trained telling him that sometimes the gut knew things before the brain did. He’d been flitting about the bedside of a patient, something was off, but the charts hadn’t given anything away.

 

That’d been a few seconds before the patient had gone into cardiac arrest.

 

She’s the only one in the room, it’s a Tuesday and a lot of the traffic to this injecting room comes over the weekend.

 

He normally doesn’t work Tuesdays but the other nurse called in sick and they were desperate. He’d mumbled _yes_ into his phone even as his eyes drifted shut after a long day at the hospital.

 

He guesses it’s something to do with that gut instinct.

 

It’s a bit quieter and it affords him the chance to try for an actual conversation.

 

“So, Katniss,” he toys with the back of the chair opposite to her, “Do you mind if I join you?”

 

She looks up at him through a fringe of dark lashes, “Can you bring some water?”

 

Suppressing the tilt of his lips as they try for a victorious smirk, he nods and grabs two bottles from the fridge in the resuscitation room.

 

He pulls out the chair and watches as she fumbles with the lid. As skinny as she is, Katniss seems strong, determined.

 

“Why do you work here?” She says after downing a few gulps.

 

Well, it’s not like an injection room is going to be the place for your typical pleasantries.

 

“I knew someone who was addicted once, saw how hard it was to quit, to stay safe.”

 

There’s more but he doesn’t want to tell her everything yet. He might be open and charming and beautiful but Peeta knows that telling some sob story isn’t going to be what earns this girl’s trust. She’ll think he pities her.

 

And it’s not pity, it’s more than that, but he can’t find the word.

 

She shrugs as though that’s all she could have expected, pulls the plastic-wrap out of her pocket.

 

“What about you?” He pushes, “Why are you here?”

 

When her eyes lift to his all he can think about is all the other places he’d rather see them. They linger for a moment. He feels like he’s being examined, judged, and if he passes this test he’ll gain access to some secret part of her.

 

So he holds her gaze.

 

“I knew someone who was addicted once,” she parrots, lip curling, eyes moving back to the task at hand, “Saw how easy it was to start.”

 

He ducks his head to hide his smile. Okay, so maybe there’ll be a few more tests to pass before he gets to the deep stuff.

 

Katniss presses the filter into the liquid, and he watches the dissolved powder soak to its edges, watches as she dips the needle in, sucks up the hopefully purified dose.

 

_Dear God_ , he thinks, but doesn’t continue.

 

She fidgets for a moment, eyes flicking from the tip of the needle to the table, “Can you…” she trails off.

 

Peeta notices the rubber tubing on the table and gets the hint - she forgot to tie off and doesn’t want to contaminate anything. He doesn’t think to mention the number of times he’s wiped it down with antibacterial wipes, instead he stands, moves around her, wraps the tubing around her upper arm and watches as she clenches her fist to draw up the veins.

 

He tries not to make it obvious that he’s lingering on her skin, it’s warm under his fingertips.

 

He realises that he almost expected her to be cold, Dead On Arrival? Isn’t that what the kids call it. Peeta bites his lip. Not on his watch.

 

“Thanks,” Katniss mumbles, lines up the tip of the needle with the protruding vein, doesn’t even flinch as she presses it through her skin. There are small, pink-white scars dotting the insides of her otherwise olive wrists, elbow - all of them needle marks. Peeta swipes his hand over his face.

 

Jesus fucking Christ.

 

His mind clouds over, an image of Katniss shooting up in some darkened alleyway, needle end blunted with overuse, scarring the tissue as she misses and misses and misses and Christ he would have helped her, he would have held her steady.

 

“Are you hungry?”

 

He tries again, she’s already got a lighter and water. It’s all he’s got left to offer.

 

Moving in front of her he tries not to watch the liquid going into her veins. Just watching her face he can almost forget that he’s in some government-sanctioned, community-hated injecting room talking to a girl he barely knows, she looks calm, eyes clear.

 

She nods.

 

He’s just a friend, they’re friends hanging out and he’s grabbing snacks.

 

They sit and eat biscuits. Katniss is mostly quiet, Peeta holds up enough conversation for the both of them anyway. He tells her funny stories from his days in the hospital, counting each smile and laugh that he gets out of her as a small victory.

 

“My mum was a nurse,” she says. It’s abrupt. The first real thing she’s said to him apart from her name.

 

If there’s one thing Peeta’s become especially good at since he started working here, it’s observation. Like how he’s been monitoring the rate of her breathing since she injected - it’s low, as expected after a hit, but not drastic, her smile’s become lazier, a little more trusting, and she used past tense.

 

The question that lingers on his lips is: _Didn’t want to follow in her footsteps?_

 

But he looks at the used needle on the table and thinks maybe she did.

 

So instead he asks: “Did she have funny stories, too?”

 

Katniss’ lips twist, “That’s assuming I think yours are funny.”

 

He lifts a hand to his heart - “Ooft. And here I was about to quit nursing for stand-up comedy with how much you’ve been laughing.”

 

“I have not!” She insists but there’s laughter on her lips and a gleam in her eye. He wants to know if he could do this without the heroin, if he could make her smile and laugh and feel okay.

 

Eventually they finish the plate of biscuits and he knows they’re well outside the danger zone, so he doesn’t feel the need to fetch for excuses to make her stay.

 

“Are you going to talk to the counsellor?” He asks, wiping down the table and disposing of the needle in the sharps bin.

 

Katniss shrugs, “Are they any good?”

 

“Haymitch? Yeah, he used to be an addict himself, so he gets it more than most I’ve met.”

 

He looks over at her, hides the hope in his voice and his eyes.

 

She nods and waves, but as she leaves she says, “I’ll see you next time.”

 

No miracles today, then.

 

––––

 

He only works at the centre three nights a week. Monday and Tuesday he works in the hospital, shuffling bedpans and charming the sick and the dying.

 

He takes Wednesdays and Thursdays off.

 

It’s like having a private weekend.

 

His sleep schedule is fucked, but he doesn’t care. If he could he would be at the centre every night, but for now they are trying to split the load. He thinks it’s because they don’t want to scare off the nurses. It can get a bit intense sometimes.

 

But it means that in a typical week there are four nights in a row where he can’t be sure if Katniss is still alive. It’s confusing the way she’s infiltrated his thoughts.

 

He hates the way relief unknots his gut every Friday when she walks in. She flashes him some half-smile and always sits in the table furthest from the door. He pretends that he doesn’t try to make sure everyone else who comes in before she arrives sits somewhere else.

 

It’s so dumb. He feels like a teenager with a crush, but it’s not the same. He was debate captain in school, so it’s not like he’s incapable of stringing a few sentences together.

 

But when Katniss walks in, his tongue knocks around his teeth like a drunkard and his chest tightens around his breath.

 

They don’t have the chance to properly talk because it’s too busy over weekends and she’s not the only one he needs to look after. But he’s taken to baking cookies in the afternoons before he comes to the centre.

 

He tells her it’s because he’s the son of a baker, couldn’t take the store-bought crap the centre had been forcing on him anymore.

 

Pretty much everyone coming through over the weekend seems happy with this improvement. But Katniss just nods, mumbles thanks, and pockets the cookie. He’s never seen her eat one.

 

––––

 

“They’re gingersnaps,” he says.

 

It’s a Tuesday again.

 

He’d tried not to sound too excited when the other nurse called in sick again.

 

“Thanks,” she says, carefully adding the water to her spoon, pocketing the cookie.

 

“I have more. If you want more,” he holds out the box, manages to keep the blush from rising to his cheeks. He’s twenty-six for god’s sake.

 

She looks up, takes another cookie, puts it in her pocket.

 

“Thanks.”

 

He sighs, but keeps a smile on his face as he pulls out the chair to sit across from her again.

 

“How’ve you been?”

 

“Fine,” she mumbles, flicking on the lighter, watching the powder disappear.

 

He bites his lip, beats his fingers across the table.

 

“The hospital was crazy today,” he launches into a story involving an adult diaper and a lot of miscommunication, but barely gets a smile out of her. 

 

“You’re a lot more talkative than the other nurse,” she says as she aligns the needle over her veins.

 

She starts at her wrist this time, but it collapses under the skin and she curses.

 

She moves to the crease of her elbow and the same thing happens, “Fuck! Fuck this!”

 

Her hand lifts. He sees anger flit across her eyes - she wants to smash it. She wants to smash everything.

 

“Katniss, Katniss - wait!” He holds up his hands, keeps his voice calm. He’s about to do something stupid, but something’s wrong, and he just wants her to be okay. Whatever kind of fucked up okay it is.

 

“Let me, I can do the other side for you.”

 

Her eyes find his; the pupils are so fat, the whites reddening with tears of frustration.

 

“Can you?” Her voice is so small and it cracks at the end and he has to physically restrain himself from cradling her in her in his arms, pressing kisses to the greasy hair of her forehead.

 

“I can.”

 

His voice is steady, but urgent. She reaches out her right arm across the table and he ties it off with the rubber tubing, gets her to unclench and clench her fist, hopes that no one walks in right now.

 

He talks in a low, relaxed voice, it feels like the times he gets children in the hospital, scared of needles and wondering why their parents can’t be there all day.

 

“Okay, Katniss,” he says once the vein is ready, “I’ll start with your wrist first in case it collapses again then we’ll still have the elbow.”

 

“Okay,” she mumbles. He flicks his eyes to hers and sees she calmed down some.

 

It works; he gets her to undo the tie as he goes. He keeps his left palm wrapped around her forearm; thumb lightly pressing into the side of her wrist as he goes.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says once he swabs the injection site, disposes of the needle.

 

“I’ve had a really bad few days.”

 

He decides that means he needs to keep her here longer, she could have done something stupid like up the dose. He just… he needs her to be okay.

 

“It’s okay,” he says, “You can tell me about it if you like. I’m here to listen.”

 

It’s not exactly a lie.

 

“My sister’s cat died,” her lips twist after he says it, but the heroin must be doing its job because her breathing stays even, calm.

 

“What was its name?”

 

His fingers twitch on the table top. He could explain away helping a patient inject, but holding their hand would probably be crossing some imaginary line.

 

She smiles, “Buttercup.”

 

He puts his hands in his lap, leans against the wall and watches her face as she talks.

 

“I hated the damn thing. It was the most feral creature to walk through our door - and that’s saying a lot,” she laughs and it’s a little too self-deprecating for him to laugh along with her, “He was just the last thing I had of her.”

 

 

“I’m sorry, Katniss.”

 

She shrugs.

 

“That’s life.”

 

He sits up straight.

 

“Well you know what’s good for life?”

 

She raises an eyebrow, glances at the bin where he just threw out the needle.

 

“Apart from that,” he groans, rolls his eyes. It’s that thing about her not being someone who appreciates pity. He guesses it probably applies to self-pity too. She’s here to feel okay, normal.

 

An incredulous laugh emerges from her when he stands to grab a deck of cards.

 

“Go Fish, or Bullshit?”

 

––

 

It turns out that Katniss sucks at Bullshit. She can’t lie to save her life, scowls every time he plays something she can’t play on top of, grins a sly little grin when she thinks she’s got him.

 

They switch to something that doesn’t require great deceptive skill when she winds up with more than forty cards in her hand a few times in a row.

 

“Unfair,” she scowls (he decides the scowl doesn’t always have to be a bad thing), as he shuffles the cards.

 

It’s been over half an hour so he’s sure she would be fine now but he decides he wants to keep her a little longer. As long as she’s willing to stay, really.  

 

“Okay let’s play higher or lower.”

 

She groans, “Is this where you try to prove to me that not only are you an excellent liar but also some kind of psychic?”

 

He laughs and notices the way her lips slip into a pleased little smile.

 

He can laugh for her.

 

“Or we can just talk, if you’re sick of having your ass whooped.”

 

She huffs, crosses her arms, but he can tell she’s not really upset.

 

“How old are you?” She blurts out, eyes darting across the scratches on the surface of the table.

 

“Twenty-six.”

 

“I’m twenty.”

 

Twenty. He’d just started his third year of college that year. He’d already decided he wanted to be a nurse, was volunteering at hospitals on the weekend. On a Tuesday afternoon he had wrestling training. On Fridays he was at the frat house getting drunk with his friends, fending off offers to snort coke off toilet seats.

 

“What hospital do you work at?” She shoots off before he can get too sentimental.

 

“St. Johns.”

 

He would question back, but it seems like she needs to lead this interrogation. Some element of vulnerability requiring her to gain the higher ground.

 

“I was born there.”

 

He tries to imagine her on that first day of life. Olive skin coated red, mouth wide and wailing, chubby legs kicking, a smattering of dark hair coating her head. Innocent. No concept of the dragon looming in her mind.

 

She fires off a few more questions. Nothing too serious, but with each piece of himself that Peeta reveals, she gives a little of herself too.

 

Someone else walks into the room, another regular, Johanna, who snarls at Katniss when she sees her before situating herself on the table closest to the door.

 

He stands to sort out the equipment for Jo, notices Katniss’ standing to leave.

 

“Bye, Peeta,” she mumbles, halfway out the door, “And I like it.”

 

What?

 

“Compared to the other nurse.”

 

The talking. She likes the talking.

 

She disappears before she can hear Johanna’s snort, but Peeta can’t wipe the smile off his face all evening.

 

––––

 

“I spoke to Haymitch,” she says even as she swabs at the small bead of blood in her elbow crease, “How the fuck did that guy get approved to be a counsellor?”

 

Peeta snorts, holding out the plate of cookies he’s been offering up and down the line. It’s not a well-kept secret that he is the favourite nurse at the centre.

 

Katniss takes one and eyes it warily, sniffing before taking a bite, “I thought you said you didn’t like store-bought cookies.”

 

He scoffs, “I don’t whether to be offended that you think I’d lie or that you think these are store-bought.”

 

She chews, eyes narrowed, “These are the ones from that pink box. I know because whenever Dad got his Christmas bonus he’d bring these home. You can’t fool me.”

 

He smiles, “Danish Wedding Cookies.”

 

She lifts a finger as though to say ‘A-ha!’ but he just crosses his arms, “Well _my_ father, the baker, if you’d care to remember, used to make his own much better recipe and that’s what you are currently enjoying right now.”

 

She scowls, “When I’m this doped up, Peeta, everything tastes good.”

 

He swipes a hand across his face and sighs, shooting her a look before going to check on another person in the room.

 

She’s taken to lingering a little longer after she injects, often waiting until they have a chance to properly talk. She says it’s because she had to get a new dealer and she doesn’t trust them as much, but he likes to think she kind of considers him a friend.

 

He wonders how many of those she has. Friends. Who looks after her when she goes home? Does she even have a home?

 

The things he knows about her are random, a splintered fraction of a whole. He knows her favourite colour (it’s green, like the forest, and she’d been snarling about how boring the concrete room was when she’d admitted it). He knows that her family is dead, that she hates cats, that she’s good with a lighter and that she hates admitting she finds his jokes amusing.

 

But he doesn’t know what she does everyday, if she has any hobbies other than shooting up, where she gets the money to pay for it.

 

He can’t ask these things. It might not be a hospital but there has to be some element of professionalism. But he thinks that’s why she waits around, because she needs a friend.

 

And he can do that for her. He can be a friend.

 

It quiets down quickly, especially for a Friday, but when he looks at the clock it’s almost four in the morning and he realises she’s been waiting an hour.

 

“So, Haymitch?” He prods, there’s probably only one thing she needs more than a friend.

 

With a hurrumph she crosses her arms and juts out her bottom lip in a pout. It might just be damn near the cutest thing he’s ever seen her do and he has to press his head against the cool concrete of the wall beside him to stop himself from doing anything _really_ stupid.

 

“He said he thinks I’m a dead slug.”

 

He laughs. He can’t help it. Even the glare she shoots at him doesn’t stop the smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

 

“He said that?”

 

“Well,” she mumbles, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth as she inspects her nails, “Maybe not exactly like that.”

 

He reaches across the table to tug at the end of her braid. It’s the most contact he’s made with her since he helped her inject a few weeks ago. Her eyes shoot to his but he pulls his hand back calmly, like it was totally fine, not weird, not at all to do with the sudden increase in heart rate he can feel stuttering against his chest.

 

“He mightn’t be the nicest counsellor on the planet, but if you listen to him, he’ll get just about anyone back on their feet.”

 

He worries about this. About how to talk to her about the fact that she has a problem. Objectively they both know it’s true, and it’s an elephant that lounges on the table between them anytime they talk. Not quite acknowledging, skirting around it.

 

He knows that right now, the thing she needs to be okay is the drug. But last Sunday he had to bring someone back from the dead and the entire time he was thinking of her, thinking of when and not if and it terrified him.

 

She nods, “I know,” but her voice is small.

 

A silence lingers between them. She plays with the lighter. Her eyes focus on the flame. She captures it between her thumb and forefinger, and he watches the carbon collect on her fingertips.

 

“How often do people OD here?”

 

She doesn’t look at him as she asks this.

 

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He needs a trim.

 

“It varies, sometimes one a week, or a fortnight, sometimes we get five in a night.”

 

He looks over at her, at the long, black lashes that kiss her cheekbones as she blinks.

 

“That only happens when someone is selling bad stuff on the street, they’ll all have gotten it from the same dealer, and after we figure out who it is we’ll warn everyone coming through.”

 

Her mouth rounds into an ‘O’.

 

He looks over at the clock, 2.30.

 

“My shift ends in half an hour.”

 

She nods, starts to collect her things, but he asks, “Do you need a lift anywhere?”

 

Her eyes widen, she looks at him, eyes flicking across his face. She looks at her hands.

 

“Um, no, it’s cool. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

And then she’s gone before he can say anything else.

 

––––

 

Perils of working in a hospital include sick people. So he gets sick and stays in his apartment, covered in blankets, half empty packets of Cold&Flu Relief piled up on his bedside table.

 

It’s been seven days since he had physical, visible proof that Katniss is alive and he thinks that’s what’s really making him delirious. Not the fever.

 

He’ll sweat it out and he’ll go back tomorrow. He has to.

 

_Dear God_ , he mutters to himself, teeth chattering, blond curls damp and clinging to his sweaty forehead, back aching, limbs shaking, _dear God…_

 

––––

 

“You look like shit,” Johanna says as she stalks into the room. He’s better, but his skin is still pale, bags still weigh heavily under his eyes. But he couldn’t rest another day. His rent is due at the end of the week. That’s why.

 

“You’re not looking too crash hot yourself,” he fires back. His body might be tired but his mind is ready for a bit of sharp shooting.

 

She levels him with a raised eyebrow before shaking out the baggie in front of her.

 

“Don’t have all day now, people to see, places to be, chop chop!”

 

He rolls his eyes but gets everything for her.

 

It’s been quiet, it’s Sunday and tomorrow’s a long weekend. Most of the regulars have left the centre of the city since a lot of things are shut.

 

So he sits and chats with Johanna. She’s snarky as hell, bordering on just plain mean but he shoots back and she appreciates it.

 

He doesn’t know a whole lot about her history but from the little he’s gathered she’s a bit like Katniss, no family left, a shitty lot in life.

 

But with Jo there’s a level of absolute _fuck the world_ that he’s not sure he sees in Katniss. Jo shoots up with a snarl of pride, a mean look in her eye that dares you to judge her for it.

 

With Katniss, it almost feels like she’s resigned herself to it. This is it. Injecting heroin is what she was built for, nothing else. Like she believes she’s not worth anything else.

 

He has to rest a hand against his chest, has to make sure his heart isn’t spilling out through the pores of his skin.

 

“How’s your girl?” Jo asks with a sigh as the drug enters her body, jaw clenching and unclenching with satisfying release.

 

“Who?”

 

But she looks right at him, eyes slits, as her head leans back against the wall. Her lip curls. _Don’t play dumb with me, brainless._

 

He rests his head in his hand, looks away from her. He doesn’t think he’s ever acknowledged this out loud. Whatever _this_ is.

 

“I don’t know,” he mumbles, fiddles with the drawstring on his scrubs, “Haven’t seen her since before I got sick.”

 

“I saw her a few hours ago,” Jo says, the harshness of her voice easing off as the opiate takes hold, “She was getting drinks with some guy at the bar around the corner, forget what it’s called.”

 

Some guy. He doesn’t think about it. He puts it away. It’s fine. She has a life outside of this room and so does he.

 

“Looked like a brother or something.”

 

He doesn’t think so, but it’s nice for Jo to try. She doesn’t stay for much longer, happy to go keep living in the real world.

 

He guesses that’s what it is. This room isn’t the real world. In this room you can shoot up without fear of the police, without the judgement, without all of that crap. The real world doesn’t tolerate people like Johanna or Katniss or anyone else who walks through that door. Even Peeta.

 

It’s some twisted kind of paradise in here. An escape. A fucking vacation from _real_ life.

 

––––

 

When he sees her again he feels like crying. Not because it’s love or anything, but because it’s been two damn weeks and anything could have happened in the meantime. He tries to figure out when he got so desperate to know that someone was simply _alive_.

 

He couldn’t suppress the smile he throws her way even if he wanted to. He doesn’t. He wants her to know that he’s happy to see her. He wants her to realise how important seeing her is to him. Even if it’s in this concrete shangri-la.

 

She smiles back. It’s not as vibrant, as toothy, just a little twitch in the corners of her lips. But he knows first hand how hard it is to get a smile out of her, takes this to mean a lot more than he probably should.

 

She’s happy to see him too.

 

When he brings her the equipment he has to focus on keeping his hands steady, by his sides.

 

“Hey, friend,” he says.

 

“Hi,” she murmurs, twirling the end of her braid between her fingers.

 

Someone else walks into the room.

 

Peeta spends the rest of the night watching Katniss out of the corner of his eye, scared he’ll blink and she’ll disappear. But she doesn’t.

 

He hands out chocolate chip cookies and hides his frown when she pockets it.

 

But she doesn’t leave straight away, waits for a moment for them to have a proper conversation. He clings to the thread-like strands of hope that she comes here not just for the drugs, but also for him.

 

He’d never thought he’d be grateful for the existence of heroin (at the same time, he hates himself.)

 

“So,” she traces a crack in the plastic table top, it’d appeared last week when another semi-regular had lost his temper and slammed a fist in it. It had taken every soothing word in Peeta’s vocabulary to stop him from ripping the table from the wall. Security had teetered in the doorway, held back only by Peeta’s palm.

 

But it’d been fine. It wasn’t always fine.

 

“So,” he says, looking towards the door, sighing in relief to see that it’s empty at last. He sits across from Katniss, looks her over for signs of obvious injury. She’s okay, he thinks. Skinnier still. Her skin is like plasticine that’s been rolled out too thin; the peak of her collarbone frightens him, the prominence of her cheekbones like two freshly sharpened knives. He wants to smooth the edges of her, fill her with a hearty meal.

 

“I was upstate,” she says, and the words make him flush. She could sense he was worried about her. She’s the one who ends up soothing him.

 

“Oh, did you have a good time?”

 

She shrugs. It’s obviously not really something she wants to talk about. Or maybe it’s something she doesn’t remember much of.

 

Her eyes start drooping. Her breathing slows. Peeta sits up straighter in his seat. He places a hand over his chest. He can feel his heart fluttering in his chest.

 

_Dear God…_

 

A wrap on the front door distracts him for just a moment, “We’re closing up, Peeta,” says Effie from the front desk, her heavily made-up eyes flit to Katniss, “You all good?”

 

He looks at Katniss too; she’s half asleep, mumbling something at him. He looks at the needle and the spoon and the tubing and the lighter, searching for something to tell him what’s going to happen.

 

She startles back awake, shoots him a sleepy smile and a yawn.

 

He tells Effie that it’s all fine.

 

“Hey,” he reaches for Katniss’ forearm, tries to fight the tingles that shoot up from his fingertips, “Let me give you a lift home, you’re seeming a lot slower than usual.”

 

She scratches at her skin.

 

“I had to get the shit from somewhere else again today,” she slurs, words stringing together in drawn out stretches. Looks at him through lidded eyes. She knows something is wrong.

 

“That’s okay, let me just clean up and I’ll take you home.”

 

As much as the centre would like to be open twenty-four hours it’s not quite possible. They close at three am and reopen just in time for the breakfast crowd at nine. Peeta usually starts a shift just after lunch and takes a break somewhere around midnight.

 

By close he’s usually zonked and ready to collapse into his mattress.

 

But he couldn’t be more awake as he cleans up after Katniss and helps her out the back.

 

Haymitch is just locking up his office as they leave. He shoots Peeta a look that gets largely ignored, and raises an eyebrow at Katniss as she shuffles along behind them. Her nose is running and she wipes it away with the back of her hand.  She’s too sleepy to even notice the looks they exchange.

 

“Is the kid alright?” Haymitch mumbles, nudging Peeta’s side with an elbow.

 

“Don’t know yet.”

 

The older man nods, scratching the dark scruff of his beard.

 

“Might have a chat with her tomorrow.”

 

“‘kay.”

 

“G’night, Katniss,” Haymitch says with a wave as he pushes through the door. She lifts a half-hearted hand, stumbling closer to Peeta once they’re alone.

 

“My home’s real ugly,” she says, flopping into his side. He hesitates before winding an arm over her shoulders. He’s worried about her. It’s okay.

 

“That’s okay, I think I’m going to take you to the hospital, is that okay?”

 

Her face crumples into a frown, she wants to say no, but the part of her mind that knows this is wrong says, “Okay.”

 

He folds her into the front seat of his car. Her head lolls back against the headrest.

 

“Why’re you so fucking nice?”

 

He just chuckles, but her eyes open, wide and silver and desperate for a real answer.

 

For just a moment, he lets himself give in and pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

 

Her eyes flicker between his, as clear and coherent as they could be, for a moment he forgets that she could easily be on the verge of respiratory failure.

 

“Because I think you really just need someone to be nice, I think no one did that for you before, and I want to. I want to do that for you.”

 

She draws in a sharp breath, but seems satisfied with the answer, falling back into the seat, eyes drifting shut again she starts scratching fervently at her skin.

 

––––

 

He stays with her all night at the hospital.

 

She’s fine.

 

She just sleeps it off. He thinks maybe he overreacted, but he would rather the crick in his back than the thought of her alone in her bed, lungs collapsing under the weight of euphoria.

 

She won’t quite look him in the eye when she wakes, but when the nurse comes into to tell her she can go home she grips his hand in some kind of thank you.  

 

“Any time, Katniss.”

 

She laughs, standing on wobbly feet, “I’m gonna kill Gale when I get home, that was the shittest stuff I’ve ever had.”

 

Peeta tries to smile but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s glad she’s not looking.

 

“Do you need a lift?”

 

She looks then, eyes crinkling at the edges with her smile. He thinks his heart might have stopped.

 

“Nah, all good.”

 

She reaches out, brushes her fingers across his forearm. He realises how tired he is.

 

“Thanks for being nice.”

 

He feels his cheeks heat but holds her gaze, matching her smile with a shy one of his own.

 

–

 

He thinks about her the short drive home. He sees her in his dreams. But it’s a good dream. A nice dream. They’re sitting in a meadow, just chatting, laughing. Her eyes a bright. Her fingers brush his forearm.

 

“Thank you,” she says.

 

“Thank you.”

 

––––

 

She doesn’t come back to the centre the next night, whether it’s because she doesn’t have any product or whether she’s just a little scared, he doesn’t know. A part of him is grateful that he gets through the night without seeing her face. He doesn’t think he could cope with a scare like that again. Another part of him just wants her there so he can tuck her into his side and never let go.

 

Haymitch curls his head around the doorway during a quiet period, coughing and curling a finger in Peeta’s direction. He walks far enough that he can keep an eye on the room but listen to what the old man has to say.

 

“That girl’s gonna need someone to look out for her.”

 

His voice is gruff, but his eyebrows crinkle together.

 

“From the few times I’ve spoken to her, she doesn’t have anyone to pull her out, lives with another user et cetera.”

 

Peeta nods. He knows the type. It makes it hard to break out of the cycle, makes it almost impossible to even consider.

 

“Next time she comes I’m going to recommend she finds somewhere else to live, someone who can help her with the withdrawal.”

 

The end of his sentence draws up into a question, arms crossed tight over his chest as he eyes Peeta.

 

“Yeah, okay,” he tugs at the too long blond curls at the base of his neck, “If she asks me she can stay with me. Of course.”

 

He tries to keep the excitement out of his voice, but Haymitch rolls his eyes anyway.

 

“I know it’s not conventional, boy, but when you’re in it as she deep as she is convention doesn’t really fucking matter, now does it?”

 

Peeta shakes his head. No, it really doesn’t. He thinks of his mother rifling through his piggy bank, slapping him silly just because he spent his pocket money on an ice cream instead of giving it to her, of the pocked skin of her sunken face. He thinks he wouldn’t have cared who’d helped her, if only someone had.

 

––––

 

He finds her waiting out the back the next night, after he’d already seen her and they’d skirted around her not-quite-disaster.

 

“So,” she mumbles, fists shoved into the pockets of her jacket.

 

“So,” he says, leaning a shoulder against the back wall.

 

“Do you think I’m ready? To quit?”

 

He shrugs his shoulders, watches the trembling shadows her eyelashes cast over her cheekbones.

 

“Do you want to?”

 

She bites her lip, looks to the toe of her worn out converse.

 

“I never really wanted to start.”

 

He thinks to himself _fuck it_ , reaches forward, grabs her hand in his.

 

“However much you want me to, I’ll help.”

 

It’s unspoken, but they both know there’ll be moments when she really doesn’t want him to help too, moments when he’ll stay anyway.

 

She looks up, her eyes a little red, a little watery. She looks away before he can see her do something stupid like cry.

 

“Thank you,” she says, voice croaky with a strange mixture of relief and terror.

 

He hands her a piece of paper. His address is scrawled between the perfectly creased folds. She’ll look at it later and trace the slanted script with her index finger, sounding out the words with the shape of her tongue.

 

“When you feel ready,” he says, “I’ll be waiting.”

 

––––

 

It turns out that she’s not ready for a little while. She might have had a bad experience with some fucked up product, but it turns out that she’s far more scared of leaving behind the routine of the injecting room, the closeness of her current roommate.

 

“Gale,” she tells him, “We…” she trails off.

 

“It’s complicated.”

 

He understands and he still feeds her cookies when she comes in, hands her a cottonwool bud and a bandaid when beads of blood pool in the crease of the elbow, lets her rest her head on his hip with a sigh as he stands beside her. She looks so small from above, so fragile.

 

It’s a weird contrast of strength and vulnerability that he senses in her. The cut line of bones on her skin - strong, sharp, starved. He doesn’t know whether to worship her or coddle her but is beginning to understand that it’s probably somewhere in between.

 

Whatever it is, the thing she needs most in time.

 

Haymitch tells him at the end of each shift that’s she’s getting there. She’s almost ready to take the jump. She can’t afford rehab. So on and so forth as though even if it took her a year he wouldn’t still be waiting and willing to help her.

 

He feels it in the way his blood thrums around his brain, his soul, _Katniss_. It’s like destiny, or some crap. He hates himself for the intensity, knows he has to suppress it or she’ll run off.

 

But he wants, more than he’s wanted anything in his whole life, for her to be okay.

 

And the wasting body in front of him says that she’s anything but.

 

––––

 

It doesn’t take a year. Just a month.

 

He’s coming home from a long shift at the hospital and he finds her sitting on the doormat in front of his apartment.

 

Her hair is loose from its braid, long strands falling down around her face. She’s only got one bag. Her fingers are shaking against her thighs.

 

He smiles, and she bursts into tears.

 

“I’m so scared,” she says into his shoulder as he picks her up of the ground, carries her across the threshold (tries not to think too hard about it).

 

“I know,” he tucks her into the freshly washed sheets of the spare bed, cocooning her in the warmth of a down-stuffed quilt. He kisses her forehead. He brings her a mug of hot chocolate, tells her stories about his day and watches her suck warm milk out of the marshmallows.

 

He does it until she calms down and he can’t see the tear tracks under her eyes, until he can almost see her lips twitch up in a smile. Victory.

 

“When was the last time you used?”

 

He hates to break the moment, but if he’s going to help her, this conversation needs to happen.

 

“This afternoon, just before I left for yours,” she says it in such a small voice, like he’s going to be disappointed that she hadn’t quit already.

 

“Have you ever tried quitting before? Or gone a few days without it?”

 

She nods her head ‘yes’, eyes flicking away from him and towards a bad memory.

 

“So you know it sucks.”

 

She nods again.

 

“I’ll call in sick tomorrow and then I’ll have the time to help you through the worst of it, okay? I’ll be here for all of it.”

 

He hates how she grimaces, “I don’t want to be a burden,” she says, voice full of self-hatred.

 

“Oh, Katniss,” he pushes the hair away from her face, takes the empty mug from her hands, “There’s no chance in hell that will ever be true.”

 

––

 

He wakes up to the sound of screaming, rushes in to her room to find the bed covers pushed off the bed, eyes wide, pupils dilated so far he can only see the inky black wells.

 

Before he can even comfort her she blurts out, “I’m gonna be sick.”

 

They wind up spending the rest of the night with her huddled over the toilet bowl vomiting. He holds her hair back, presses his palm to her forehead, washes the sweat and the bile from her face, puts her in the shower to cool down, rubs her back, holds her as she cries, rocks her back to sleep.

 

––

 

She wakes again a few hours later, shaky and weak.

 

She holds her head between her thumb and forefinger, rubbing at her temples.

 

He piles breakfast on to her plate and tells her to eat as much as she can, pours a giant glass of orange juice and places a few pills beside it for the headache and the muscle ache and the ache of losing the only thing that made her feel normal.

 

But she pushes them away. She doesn’t need to say anything. He gets it.

 

The actual vomiting seems to have thankfully been only in the beginning, so they spend the rest of the day watching movies on his couch. He fills up hot water bottles for her cramps and sore back and body. He gets her cups of ice-cold water to help keep hydrated.

 

It’s kind of fucked up. But he enjoys hanging out like this.

 

He thinks, despite everything, watching her laugh at Peter Quill flipping off the camera, that maybe she does too.

 

––––

 

It takes a week of hell but they get through it.

 

She stops feeling quite so shit around dinnertime on Monday and actually scoffs down the entirety of the lamb stew he puts in front of her.

 

“Holy shit,” she says, rubbing her bloated stomach, “As if you’re in nursing. You should totally be a chef.”

 

He blushes as he clears the plates, ears tingeing pink with joy as she slurps the dregs of stew from the bottom of her bowl.

 

“Benefits of being son of a baker,” he said, trying not to watch as she licked her fingers.

 

She furrows her brow, “I bet everyone’s missed those cookies this weekend.”

 

He hears a note of that self-hatred in her voice, no matter how many times he told her over the weekend that he was happy to be helping her, that it was okay - that he _wanted_ to help -, she never seemed to believe him.

 

“Nah,” he starts stacking the dishwasher, “They’ll be right until friday.”

 

He yawns, stretching his arms over his head, missing the way her eyes flick to the skin of his abdomen as his t-shirt rides up with the movement.

 

“So,” she says, eyes turned to the ceiling, “Can we get out of here for a bit? I just realised it’s been seven days since I breathed fresh air.”

 

Peeta laughs, grabbing his house keys from the dish by the front door, slipping his toes into a pair of loafers, “It’s lucky you said that, because I was going to drag you out whether you wanted to or not.”

 

They walk to an ice cream shop a few blocks from his apartment. He lives pretty central, at least compared to her. Close to the hospital he works at, a ten minute drive from the injection rooms. Katniss can’t help but marvel at the proximity to, well, _everything_ , and he figures that as long as she’s hanging around with him he’s going to ensure they make the most of it.

 

He goes to take out his wallet to pay for her double-scoop of chocolate and peanut butter fudge but she’s pulled a few crumpled notes and some coins from her back pocket before he even gets the chance.

 

She shoots him a stern look before ducking away from his gaze, which he’s sure is a little surprised, maybe even a little hurt.

 

“I already owe you so much, Peeta.”

 

She grabs her cone and ducks outside before he can say another word, takes tentative licks that he watches through the window of the parlour while he waits for the woman behind the counter to scoop out his peach sorbet.

 

For a brief moment he fears that she’s going to run away, disappear. She needed someone for the hard part but what use is he now? He’ll find a money-filled parcel on his front doorstep in a few weeks and a thank you note.

 

No. Whatever version of the future is about to unfold, he’s going to make sure it’s not that one.

 

“How’s the ice cream?” He asks, spooning out a bite of his sorbet. He’s dropped enough cones in his lifetime to be a little too fearful of his coordination. He sticks with cups.

 

“Delicious,” but she’ll hardly look at him.

 

“I was thinking that over the next few days we’ll try and find you a job somewhere nearby, that way you can help with the groceries and stuff.”

 

It honestly pains him to say it, but the way her eyes light up as they look into his, the way her lips curve into a smile, he knows it was the right thing.

 

“Yeah? Yeah, that’s, um, that’s cool.”

 

He doesn’t think he’s ever heard someone try as hard to be nonchalant as her in that moment.

 

“Yeah,” he says, nudging her side with his elbow, “Any preferences?”

 

Whatever happens, he’s going to make damn sure that she gets whatever she wants.

 

––

 

They wind up finding some cafe that’s halfway between his apartment and the hospital, which basically means that he can drop her off in the morning and pick her up on the way home when their shifts coincide, but it’s also close enough to walk.

 

It probably helped that he’s a regular and gets on well with everyone who works there. He hopes Katniss doesn’t notice the wink Thresh throws his way as he goes over the resume they’d worked on the night before.

 

Hospitality probably isn’t the perfect industry for Katniss to work in, but it makes her happy to be doing _something._ And Thresh and Rue are nice, easy to get along with, quiet, too. He thinks she’ll fit right in.

 

It also means that he doesn’t have to worry about her while he’s at work.

 

It’s a nice little arrangement. It’s easy. His gut twists with the desire for it to work, for it to keep her near him.

 

A smile lights her face the whole way back to his apartment, but she doesn’t say anything, just hums quietly as she walks beside him, arms swinging.

 

His ears perk at the sound of her voice, it’s soothing, he feels rested, calm.

 

Everything’s going to be okay.

 

––––

 

He wakes to her screams in the middle of the night. Wretched, woeful screams that press against his skin like thorns.

 

He rushes to her room. She’s tangled in the sheets. In the light of the moon she looks like a ghost: pale and haunted. A sheen of sweat makes her skin almost translucent. He wonders if he reached touched her would she still be there?

 

“Katniss,” he soothes, sitting on the edge of the bed, unsure if he’s allowed to touch her, “Katniss, wake up, it’s a nightmare, it’s not real.”

 

Her eyes shoot open, pupils fat and wild as they take in her surroundings. They land on his face, he holds her gaze, reaches a tentative hand towards her own, brushes his thumb across the back of it.

 

“It’s okay, I’m here,” he watches the grey rim of her eyes return, “You’re safe, I’m here.”

 

“Peeta–” she chokes on a sob, tugging at his hand to pull him down onto the mattress with her. She curls into his side and heaves with the weight of whatever vision had plagued her only moments ago.

 

He shifts on to his side to tuck her against him, rubs soothing circles across her back. He’s no stranger to nightmares. He knows she just needs someone to hold her.

 

So he does that. Because, as he’s beginning to realise, whatever it is, he’ll do it for her.

 

He’s expecting embarrassment from her after she calms down. Instead she just grips his hand tighter and asks him to stay.

 

“Yeah,” he says, “Always.”

 

But she probably doesn’t hear, because her breaths have turned long and deep where he can feel them against his chest.

 

He presses a kiss to the part in her hair.

 

His eyes drift shut. He pulls her closer. He breathes her in. His consciousness fades.

 

And in the morning he’ll realise it’s the best sleep he’s ever had.

 

––––

 

They wake with her thigh trapped between his, her lips parted against his chest and dried drool crackling on the skin. His breath tastes feral in the confines of his mouth and the remnants of sleep in eyes makes them stick shut for a moment.

 

They look at each other and laugh.

 

It’s all kind of gross but to be honest it’s the nicest kind of gross they’ve seen of each other since this weird friendship began. He likes the way her usually slick straight hair is knotted and wild, the crush of mascara under her eyelids that comes from a restful sleep instead of crying on the floor of the shower as he helps her through the worst of the withdrawal.

 

It makes his heart ache, the normalcy of it all.

 

She crawls out of bed and his eyes drift to the hem of her pyjama shorts. It’s more the fact that they’re covered in cartoonish monkeys and singing bananas that makes him blush than the curve of her ass that they hint at.

 

It’s not like he hasn’t noticed. He just hopes that she’s at least a little oblivious to the effect that she has on him.

 

She doesn’t need a boyfriend. Just a friend.

 

He sits up and yawns, stretching out his shoulders from the protective hunch they’d been in all night.

 

“Race you to the shower,” he shouts, ducking out of the covers before she’s realised what’s going on, slamming the bathroom door in her face with a grin.

 

He tries not to think of the pout of her lips as he scrubs the remnants of sleep from his body.

 

––––

 

It’s really only when he’s working that his mind is able to shut out all thoughts of her. He has to focus on inserting the IV drip, figuring out the doctors’ ridiculous scrawl on the obs charts or dosing recommendations.

 

It’s weird that work is like rest for his mind. He realises that thoughts of Katniss have sent his body into overdrive. She’s everything.

 

Suddenly he can’t wait for his shift to be over.

 

He doesn’t mind it at all.

 

––––

 

They decide to go out for dinner at a local Thai place. He’s too tired from work to cook and Katniss insists that if she were to try using his kitchen they’d wind up getting to know those handsome volunteers at the local fire brigade a little better than he might like.

 

She tilts her chin in question for a moment as though maybe that’s not such a bad thing, and he drags her out of the house before she can change her mind.

 

“I’ve never eaten Thai before,” she says in between slurps of her green chicken curry. She’s had about two litres of water to cope with the chilli, but if the empty half dozen plates in front of them are any indication, she didn’t mind that at all.

 

“There’s something about savoury peanut butter that gets the heart racing,” he tugs some satay chicken off a kebab stick and licks the sauce of his fingers.

 

She rolls her eyes, “If that’s what gets your heart racing I must be doing something wrong.”

 

It takes her a second, but then her skin flushes a few shades darker, her hand over her mouth in shock.

 

He raises an eyebrow at her, lets her feel scared for just a moment before allowing the laughter to pour from him. She joins in pretty quickly but he can still see the tips of her ears perked in embarrassment.

 

It’s not like he’s going to take that as a declaration of interest. It’s obviously not what she meant.

 

So instead he makes sure they can laugh about it.

 

“Oh god,” she shakes her head in her heads, “I’ll pack up my things when we get home.”

 

_Home_.

 

He likes the way that sounds.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he laughs, “I think it just means I get to choose the movie tonight. You on the other hand, need to start figuring out how to flirt better than peanut butter.”

 

She groans and thunks her head on the table, “You’re a moron.”

 

He just laughs.

 

–––––

 

It’s hard to remember those nice moments when she’s screaming and screaming and scratching at her skin in the middle of the night.

 

He wipes the tears from her cheeks and presses her forehead against his, rocking her back and forth with a quiet mantra of _“It’s okay, you’re with me, it wasn’t real, I’ll look after you.”_

 

She always calms down but some nights it takes longer than others.

 

Sometimes he only manages to get her back to sleep as the crack of dawn peaks through the open windows and he knows he won’t be getting anymore sleep.

 

On those days he always makes pancakes and calls Thresh down at the café to let him know Katniss will be late for work.

 

He likes that Thresh doesn’t ask questions, just accepts that this is something that Peeta needs from him. He says he likes Katniss anyway; she’s got a bit of fire that keeps his customers on their toes. They like her too, even if she wouldn’t believe it.

 

She eventually stumbles out of bed, the tear tracks still visible on her cheeks, and curls up in one of the chairs at his dining table.

  
She doesn’t say anything, really, just looks listlessly at the table, fiddles with the label on the maple syrup.

 

He helps her brush her hair and her teeth and makes her teach him how to knot her hair into a braid. By the end of it he’s usually managed to crack a smile from her and says something like, “Just remember, Katniss, that you deserve to be happy,” at which point she curls into his arms and cries a little more.

 

But then she’s smiling again.

 

And he takes her to work.

 

And it’s kind of okay.

 

––––

 

He decides to change his shift at the centre. Nights are hardest for Katniss and that’s really when he needs to be home.

 

It’s sort of a different crowd during the morning. A strange mix of his old crew, like Johanna who seems to be shooting up three or four times a day, and people who only come into the city in daylight hours.

 

But it makes his life easier, that’s for sure.

 

At the end of his shift, Haymitch calls him into his office with a gruff shout of, “Wonder boy! Get in here!”

 

Peeta closes the door behind him and sags into the seat. Just because it’s daylight certainly doesn’t make this shift any less exhausting.

 

“How’s the girl? Haven’t seen her in here.”

 

Haymitch pulls out a manilla folder from a filing cabinet that Peeta sees is labelled in thick black marker: EVERDEEN, K.

 

The old man scrawls notes into as Peeta tells him about her withdrawal process, how she’s coping, and her job.

 

“Sounds like you did good, kid.”

 

Peeta nods, despite the nightmares, and the kind of bad days, it all seems pretty good, really.

 

“Don’t get too cocky about it,” he adds, eyeing the smile that tugs at Peeta’s lips, “A heroin addiction doesn’t go away that easy, okay?”

 

––––

 

Whatever fear Haymitch’s words might have incited, Katniss nightmare’s start easing off to the point where he’s not sure it’s really justifiable to be sleeping in her bed every night.

 

He brings it up over dinner even though a nasty voice inside his head tells him he should just go with it.

 

“So,” he sips at a glass of water, he’s tried to keep the house dry for the past month because the last thing she needs is something else to get addicted to straight away, “You’ve been sleeping pretty well this past week.”

 

She chews on an ice cube and he can’t help but wince at the sound.

 

“Yeah,” she shrugs, twirling her fork through the remnants on her dinner plate, “Maybe I should try sleeping alone tonight, y’know, so we’re both more comfortable?”

 

His gut twists… more comfortable? He knows he’ll be adjusting the pillows against his side in some semblance of her small body tonight. He hadn’t realised it wasn’t quite the same for her.

 

“Uh, yeah, good plan.”

 

She nods but won’t meet his eye, “What’s for dessert?”

 

––

 

It’s almost one AM but he’s still staring at the darkened ceiling. He’s tried closing his eyes and counting sheep, tried curling his leg over a pillow and stroking the back of his forearm like she’d do a little unconsciously.

 

But he can’t sleep and damn when did everything about him become so dependent? Is this what it feels like? The cravings, the sense of just wanting to feel normal.

 

But then there’s a knock on his door and Katniss is standing there biting her lip and tugging at the hem of her pj pants.

 

He pulls aside the doona and she hops into the space of his arms and his chest and his warmth and she breathes him in and he cradles her against him.

 

“I couldn’t sleep,” she murmurs into his skin and it feels like she’s branded him.

 

“Neither.”

 

“Your bed’s more comfortable.”

 

“We’ll sleep here then.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Okay.”

 

––––

 

 

A week later he wakes up on the verge of daybreak. The lingering threads of a dream tug at his consciousness but he can’t quite grasp at them.

 

His first real thought is of the erection that strains against his flannel pants.

 

He glances down at Katniss. She’s curled into a ball with her back to him. Her hair spills like black ink across his pillows and bed sheets. From behind her he can just see the rise and fall of her chest, the expansion of her lungs across her back. She’s pushed the covers away from her body, in those half-woke conversations of dreamtime he remembers her complaining how warm his body is, but the way she’s huddled now suggests she under-anticipated exactly how cold the late winter air could be.

 

Images from his dream begin coming back to him. He sees sweat-slicked skin, breasts and tongues and teeth and her eyes screwed tight against pleasure. 

 

 

He moves carefully out of the bed, terrified of waking her, tugging the covers back over to ease the frown that creases her forehead.

 

He strips in the bathroom, locking the door behind him. In his periphery he can see his erection bobbing against his stomach, but he tries not to look, is not sure he’s willing to accept what it means.

 

Under the steady spray he moves so his head until he can’t hear anything but the water streaming past his ears. He knows it should be a cold shower but fuck if it hasn’t been more than a month since he really got to touch himself, to release the ache that burns low and steady in his belly.

 

He tries not to think of the girl in the room two doors down the hall as he brushes a thumb over the tip of his cock.

 

“Fuck.”

 

He thinks of blonde hair and big tits and that porno with the hot teacher but those images constantly fade to Katniss. He imagines her in _their_ bed, stripping off her shirt, tweaking her nipples, begging him to _come here, Peeta, I need you_. He can practically taste her wet pussy on his tongue, licking at her clit, thrusting his fingers, his hard cock inside her.

 

His wrist and forearm ache with the effort and his forehead goes numb under the stream of water. But when he comes he thinks of Katniss.

 

So when he runs into her on his way back from the shower with a only a towel slung low on his hips, it makes him feel a little less perverted to notice the way her eyes linger on the lines of his abdomen, the V cut of his hips. At least until he pictures her naked in the shower, touching herself in the same place he did.

 

And then he just feels like complete and utter shit.

 

––––

 

“What do you want to see?” He asks, scanning the newspaper’s entertainment section for movie times.

 

“I don’t care as long as we get popcorn,” she replies but it’s muffled under the table where’s she’s bent tying the laces of her converse, “I haven’t had popcorn in years.”

 

He looks at her over the edges of the paper but knows she hates to see anything close to pity in his eyes so looks back before she notices.

 

“There’s lots on around six thirty, so why don’t we just agree to meet at the cinema at six and we’ll pick something random.”

 

“Okay,” she goes back to her bowl of cereal, cutting slices of banana into it before pouring in the milk. She drinks milk like crazy; he’s never had to buy so much.

 

But he notices the way her skin isn’t quite so thinly stretched, the permanent flush of her cheeks. She’s been putting on the weight she so desperately needed and he loves it, even if she complains about the way her denim jeans stretch around her thighs.

 

(All he’s noticed is the way they stretch around something else.)

 

“Do you know how to get there?”

 

Her mouth’s full so she just nods, milk dribbling down her chin.

 

He rolls his eyes, “You’re a mess, Everdeen.”

 

But there’s a flush to his cheeks and laughter in his voice and fuck does he love seeing her so carefree. He didn’t think he’d ever see this.

 

She grins at him and then points at his toast in indication to hurry up or they’ll both be late.

 

When he drops her off at the cafe he tries not to think too hard about the way she leans across the seat to kiss his cheek.

 

But he sees the shock in her eyes and knows at least, that if he does, that she probably will be too.

 

––

 

“Pick one!”

 

Peeta insists, he’s been to the movies hundreds of times in his life; he just wants Katniss to choose.

 

But she huffs and crosses her arms, staring at the green and red scrolling lights with the movie titles.

 

“I haven’t heard of any of these! You pick!”

 

He raises an eyebrow at the whine in her voice, “Why don’t you just do einy, meiny, miney, moe?”

 

She juts her lip out at him in a pout, “What do you think I am? Twelve?”

 

No. Definitely not.

 

She glances at the posters beside them and says, “Fine, Kingsmen, that guy in the poster is really hot.”

 

He frowns at the poster.

 

“You think Colin Firth’s hot?”

 

She just looks at him and shrugs, going up to the counter to buy her ticket and popcorn. They’ve established a firm half and half rule that Katniss is pretty unwilling to stray from. But it means he can refuse to let her pay for his things, too. Fair is fair.

 

He pouts at her as he asks for a ticket too, telling the giggling girl behind the counter that he’s apparently only seeing it because Colin Firth is _hot_.

 

The red head blinks up at him, “I wouldn’t worry about Colin Firth, he’s got nothing on you.”

 

But he doesn’t get a chance to respond because Katniss is tugging on his hand and dragging him to the theatre complaining, “We’ll miss the ads!”

 

––

 

“So was he as dreamy as you’d hoped he’d be?” Peeta asks, fluttering his eyelashes at her.

 

She shoves his side, pushing him away as he tugs her into his side, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

 

“Dreamier,” she gripes.

 

But then she freezes and he’s worried that he’s pushed this little flare of jealousy a bit too hard.

 

“Katniss?”

 

But the words don’t come from him. They come from someone who looks like they could be her brother. Someone tall and dark and handsome. Someone who looks kind of mad.

 

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

 

She still hasn’t spoken, is still frozen under his arm. He’s not sure if he should pull away or tuck her even further into him.

 

“Is this why you ditched me? To fuck some guy?”

 

He realises that he’s _some guy_.

 

“Gale,” she finally breathes, “Gale, I’m so sorry.”

 

She runs forward to wrap her arms around his waist and Peeta doesn’t know what to do.

 

“I had to leave, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

 

But Gale refuses to wrap his arms back around her, clenches his jaw as he looks into the space of his memories.

 

He can see tears leaking out of her eyes and soaking her friend’s shirt but he doesn’t know what to do. Feels like he’s the intruder on a personal moment.

 

“I know, Catnip.”

 

The affection in his voice is strained.

 

“I’m sorry, too,” he says, finally placing a hand on her head.

 

She looks up at him through teary eyes.

 

“Come back to me,” he whispers. Peeta feels his heart twist as he realises that he’s been all but forgotten.

 

She reaches her hands up to trace the lines of his face, the strong jaw, the cheekbones framed by scraggly strands of dark hair.

 

“I can’t,” she says, reaches forward, presses a kiss to his lips, “Find me when you’re free.”

 

And then she reaches for Peeta’s hand and they walk home in silence.

 

––––

 

They lie in bed together that night but neither of them sleep. He feels her shallow breaths against the skin of his neck and grips her fingers tight between his.

 

She hasn’t spoken a word since they ran into Gale.

 

He tries not to think, but thoughts drip like the end of a rainstorm through his mind - scattered and inconsistent, a little bit hopeless.

 

He tries to sleep, but it escapes him.

 

“In another life, I might have married Gale Hawthorne.”

 

She says it still tucked against him, head positioned under his chin so he couldn’t look at her if he tried. He gets that’s probably the point. But he curls his thumb across the back of her wrist where it lies across his pec, just to show that he’s listening.

 

“I love him,” she sighs, and he feels it breeze through the hair at the nape of his neck. 

 

He thought those words would hurt him more than they do, but it’s as though his whole body is aware of the words that will come next, his subconsciousness already clinging to a greater sense of understanding.

 

“But we kill each other.”

 

He rolls to his side but she stays tucked close, doesn’t let the space expand between them.

 

He catches her eyes in the moonlight, the redness that surrounds them. There’s sadness in the downturn of her lips, a longing for a life that she knows will never be hers, but her eyes are calm, forehead smooth of worry and resentment.

 

Their breath lingers in the space between their lips and he wonders if he can breathe her in forever.

 

––––

 

She spends the week in a haze that he can’t pull her out of. It feels like some glass cage, he presses his face to it and begs her to be okay, to come back, but she can’t hear him, can hardly even see him.

 

She doesn’t eat as much. Her nightmares come back and it takes him twice as long to calm her down.

 

He worries about her when he leaves for work and texts Thresh in all his breaks to check on her.

 

Something is off.

 

He knows it.

 

So when he wakes up to an empty bed and a note on Sunday morning that she’s gone for a walk he fears that he’s lost her.

 

When he finds that a few hundred dollars is missing from his wallet, he feels something inside him crack. A despicable sense of failure.

 

He sits at the dining room table.

 

He remembers feeling nothing when his mother died. Not happiness. Not sadness. His father had sat across from him at the dining room table, something like this one. His arms had been crossed against the broadness of his chest, above the belly made round from years working in a bakery, sneaking bites of cookie dough and cake batter.

 

Peeta had focused on the way the breath had filled his father’s lungs, the way his chest would rise and fall, how it would catch every time he started to cry. Peeta hadn’t cried. He had just watched his father at the table.

 

His brothers weren’t home yet.

 

Peeta had been the one that found her.

 

She was already dead on the bathroom floor, a needle he’d had to step around to reach her, a pool of vomit.

 

He’d never seen a dead body before. He was only eighteen. All he could think about was the smell. He’d just come home from some graduation party. He couldn’t really remember the details anymore.

 

Was he drunk?  He might have been drunk. For a minute he thought he killed her. Opened the bathroom door to shower off the alcohol and made her slip.

 

But really, he didn’t feel anything when he was sitting at that table waiting for the paramedics to finish removing the body. Waiting for his dad to stop crying.

 

All he wanted was to stop someone else from becoming his mother. Stop someone from beating their child, desperate for money, desperate for euphoria. A life-long battle to find the dragon that breathes fire and destroys everything before you, never lets you see whole, never lets you catch it.

 

And he failed.

 

He couldn’t help Katniss, he’d tried and he couldn’t remove the claws of the beast called addiction from her mind.

 

He realises he’s crying.

 

He goes to the centre. Maybe she’ll come? Maybe she’ll be there. He goes and he hopes she’ll be there.

 

She’s not.

 

––––

 

He’s sitting at home that night, a mug of tea warming his hands. The TV is on, playing some sitcom, but he has no idea what it’s about. He’s looking out the window, the weight of grey clouds heavy and low in the sky. He watches the rain as it pounds against the glass, obscuring his view of the city.

 

He almost doesn’t hear the knock on the door.

 

It’s louder again and he half-runs to it. His heart thumps so hard he swears he feels his ribs shaking.

 

She’s soaked to the bone, trembling on his doorstep, hair matted to the sides of her face.

 

“Oh, Katniss,” he draws her into him, wraps his arms around her shoulders, doesn’t care that he’s getting wet, too. She’s so cold.

 

She won’t stop trembling, like an autumn leaf on a tree.

 

“C’mon let’s get you a hot shower and a change of warm clothes.”

 

She tugs at his t-shirt, looks up at him through clumped eyelashes, “Peeta.”

 

He presses a kiss to her forehead, “After you’re warm, okay?”

 

Her face crumples but she nods, grips his hand tight as he leads her to the bathroom.

 

He helps her shed the clothes stuck to her body, she won’t stop shaking, her teeth chatter, she won’t let go of his hand.

 

“Come in with me,” she says in a voice so small he’s sure he could hold it in his palms.

 

He hesitates.

 

“Please,” she squeezes his fingers, “I don’t want to be alone.”

 

“Okay.”

 

They finish undressing in silence, and as intimate as the moment probably should be, as much as he’s unwillingly thought about this, it’s nothing like that.

 

They stand under the steam of the hot shower clinging to each other. He tries to wash the guilt from her skin and she sags against him, helpless to hold herself up under the weight of the world.

 

––

 

He makes tomato soup and they eat it in bed, slurping at the contents, leaning against each other under the warmth of his blankets.

 

When they’re done, he just piles the dishes on the floor beside his bed. There are more important things. He can do them in the morning.

 

Then they curl towards each other, the puff of the pillow hiding half her face from him. The bedside lamp bathes them in a soft glow. He thinks she looks like a dream.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

 

He starts to shake his head, to say _it’s okay, it’s already forgiven,_ but she reaches forward and smoothes her hand across his cheek, silencing him.

 

She traces the line of his jaw, the length of his nose, scratches at the curls behind his ear. All his senses are focused on her touch, unaware of anything else. His eyes fall closed for a brief moment of bliss.

 

“I was going to do it,” she continues, voice still quiet to hold the moment in place.

 

“I had the money and the contact and everything inside me was screaming _yes._ ”

 

She places her palm over his lips and he kisses the skin.

 

“But then I thought of you.”

 

She moves closer to him, shifts her hand to the back of his head, tangles her fingers in the hair.

 

“And I think I want this more.”

 

Then she’s tugging him forward, pressing her lips against his.

 

It all feels inevitable. Like every moment in his life was building up to this kiss. It’s like his soul breathes a sigh of relief - _finally_ , it says at it courses through him, as it presses into her, _finally._

 

––––

 

It’s like the floodwaters have broken and they have to spend every moment trying to push back against the rush of lust, the constant, _constant_ , sense of wanting.

 

They wake up in a mess of limbs and he doesn’t feel ashamed at the realisation of his erection. She slides against it and moans.

 

“Didn’t think it’d be that easy,” she mumbles into his mouth as they grimace at the collective taste of morning breath.

 

“Mmph,” he groans, rolling on top of her, grasping her wrists between his to kiss at her neck. She pushes her hips up against his, wraps her legs around his waist as he nibbles the length of her neck.

 

“Fuck,” he places a hand over her breast, the nipple hard through the cotton, “I have to go to work.”

 

It takes him another five minutes to pull away from her. She just lies in bed, watches as he undresses, disappears toward the shower, dresses. He feels his eyes on her, appraising.

 

“Don’t you have to get ready for work too, missy?”

 

She pulls the pillow tight against her chest and smiles into it with a hum.

 

He just shakes his head as he pulls on his briefs, wiggles his ass in her direction and smiles at the eruption of giggles that break out of her.

 

“You’re so lame,” she cries, throwing out her arms in exasperation.

 

He catches sight of the peak of her cleavage and figures he needs to leave the room now if there’s any chance of him making it to work.

 

“I like you in scrubs,” she says as he leaves the room, and he turns and pokes a tongue out at her.

 

“Hurry up, slow poke.”

 

He likes the domesticity of it all, how easy it is to slip into these roles. It’s as though all their interactions had just been teetering on the edge of this, so close to falling, and now they’ve just landed in paradise.

 

But he knows that sort of thing is too good to be true. It’s too easy. Especially considering that this time yesterday morning he’d thought he would never see her again.

 

So all this… _everything_ , that’s inside him and between them. He realises he needs to slow it down to have any chance of actually holding on to it.

 

Because this thing with Katniss?

 

God, he wants it to be real.

 

––––

 

“Peeta!”

 

He loves her sounds. He’s building a collection of them in his mind.

 

They’re pressed against the inside of the front door.

 

He likes the smallness of her, the way his body has to collapse slightly just to kiss her. She moans into his lips as he parts hers with his tongue. He traces the edges of her teeth, tugs her bottom lip between his teeth and practically gets drunk off the whine that escapes her.

 

But his hands stay firm on her hips, thumbs just tease the edges of her skin that peak out under the tight, black t-shirt she wears to work.

 

Her hands fold out against his shoulders, smooth the tense lines of his shoulders as he holds her at just the right distance not to be tempted.

 

But she doesn’t push him, doesn’t urge on anything but his heady kisses.

 

She’s waiting too.

 

He can feel it.

 

––––

 

It’s usually in the mornings when they lose most of their restraint. Maybe it’s the haze of dreamland that lingers over them, images of what could be, what _will be_ , lurking in the no man’s land between sleep and awake.

 

His fingers work their way under her sleep shorts, over her clit. He captures her moan between his lips and echoes it back into the curve of her ear.

 

His wrist pumps as he fills her with his fingers. She presses into his thigh to generate more friction.

 

“More, Peeta,” she murmurs against his skin, licking at the salt of his sweat.

 

Her hand reaches down, slips into his sleep pants, grips his cock.

 

“Fuck, Katniss,” he circles her clit harder, spreads her wetness across her folds and he practically slips in the pool of her want.

 

She teases the head of him: long, slow movements as she learns the feel of him, memorises the shape and the weight and the way it almost trembles in her grasp.

 

“I can’t wait to have this inside me,” she says as she bites down on his shoulder.

 

“Fuck,” he says, suddenly unsure why everyone always said he was articulate.

 

––––

 

She must have gone shopping at some point because he gets home from his turn buying groceries to find her sitting on the balcony in some kind of tiny blue sundress that has him weak at the knees.

 

Spring’s only just beginning to take hold but the sun is out and he guesses that out of the wind maybe it’s not quite so chilly.

 

But fuck, he really doesn’t care when the length of her legs are on full display as she rests her feet on the railing.

 

He dumps the groceries on the kitchen counter and goes to open the glass door onto the balcony.

 

She tips her head back and he catches sight of her smirk underneath the brim of her hat. Clever girl knew exactly what she was doing when she put on that dress.

 

“How was the supermarket?”

 

He’s learned that more than anything, Katniss hates the general ignoramus, and there is no greater place to find said ignorami than at the supermarket. She usually comes back huffing and puffing and ready to blow the house down. It’s gotten to the point where he’d rather just take her share of the money and do the shopping himself.

 

“It was fine,” he settles in the seat across from her and catches glimpse of the white lace of her underpants.

 

  
When his eyes flit back to her face he realises that his line of sight definitely did not go unnoticed, and that itt had definitely been her intention.

 

He falls to his knees on the pavers. She drops her legs from the railing, widening her knees.

 

“It always amazes me how calm you can stay,” her voice drops an a few notes, she moves forward a bit in the chair, “It’s like nothing can faze you.”

 

He reaches up and places his hands on her thighs. The skin is almost hot from being in the sun for so long.

 

“Oh, really?” He asks, places a kiss to the inside of her knee.

 

“Mhm,” her head drops against the back of her chair but she keeps her eyes on him, “Are you scared of anything?”

 

_Yes_ , he thinks, _terrified of losing you._

 

But he just pushes her dress further up her thighs, leans forward to breath the scent of her through her panties.

 

“Does this scare you?” He asks, reaching forward with the flat of his tongue to trace her slit through the cotton.

 

She breathes in sharply and he hears it, sees it, feels it.

 

“No,” she shudders as he presses into her clit, “A little.”

 

“Why?” He tugs the elastic to the side, exposing her to him.

 

“Anyone can see.”

 

He looks up at her, “Then you’ll have to be quiet, so they won’t know to look.”

 

And then he sucks her clit into his mouth, hard. He hears her whimper, slap a hand over her mouth.

 

He reaches down with two fingers to press inside of her, curling back to hit a spot that has her thighs trembling around his head.

 

“Peeta,” she gasps, breathless and desperate. But he’s not going to let up now he’s started.

 

He swirls his tongue over her clit, sucks on the bud and with his free hand teases the skin of her thigh.

 

He feels her walls clenching out his fingers. He hums against her. Everything inside her begins to tense and he feels her lurching forward as pleasure starts to spasm upwards and outwards.

 

“Holy Fuck.”

 

––––

 

He guesses it’s a bit weird since they already live together; but he asks her out on a date.

 

“My treat,” he says between soft kisses, “Please?”

 

She frowns at him, swirls patterns across his forearm with her index finger. He wonders what the image looks like in her mind, if there are colours and patterns or words.

 

He leans forward, arms wrapping around her as he rests his chin on the top of her head. They’d just reached his car when he came up with the idea, but now it’s what he wants more than anything.

 

“Okay,” she concedes, pressing a kiss to the small patch of chest at the top of his t-shirt.

 

He feels the grin break out across his face and he kisses her thoroughly against his car door.

 

It’s like high school all over again.

 

––

 

They eat at this nice Italian place with a view of the water and he doesn’t let go of her hand the whole time.

 

She whines about how dorky it is but every time he just presses a kiss to her fingertips and she goes beet red and lets him hold on a little longer.

 

It’s the first time the fact that she’s not twenty-one has become an issue for them, so they both drink sparkling water and pretend like it’s wine.

 

“I’m going to have to take you to places that don’t card,” she huffs after the waitress walks off with a satisfied smirk. There’s some kind of strange glee they get in catching people trying to drink underage.

 

“When do you turn twenty-one?” He feels a bit sheepish asking the question, like he should already know the answer.

 

“May eighth,” she taps the home button on his phone and looks at the screen upside down, “So, like, a bit more than a month away.”

 

Her smile drops a little and he wonders what birthdays have meant in her past.

 

It’s nice though, doing something normal with her.

 

They walk along the waterfront and kiss and hold hands and it’s all really, really nice.

 

––––

 

“C’mon Peet, I’ve hardly seen you in ages!” Finnick whines through the phone.

 

He looks across the table to see Katniss raising an eyebrow at him, obviously able to hear his friend’s grumbling from where she sits.

 

“I don’t know, man,” he hesitates but Katniss gestures a ‘shoo shoo’ motion at him like she doesn’t even understand why he’d be turning down hanging out with a friend, so he decides it’s probably not that bad an idea, “I’m just not sure I want to spend my night watching you cry when the Devils once again get slaughtered on the ice.”

 

“Oh, oh, oh!”  Finnick laughs over the phone, “I’ll see you down at The General at seven and you better bring some better shit talk than that!”

 

He hangs up with a laugh and reaches across the table to brush his thumb along the backs of Katniss’ knuckles, “Is that okay that I’m going out tonight?”

 

She nods, mouth full of cereal, but her eyes are wide, happy. He knows he won’t have to be worried about leaving her alone.

 

“You know the Netflix password?”

 

She rolls her eyes, “I think I’m old enough to know how to entertain myself.”

 

The way she says it has a different kind of image floating in his mind, potent enough that he almost rings back Finnick to cancel. But she struts away from the table, placing her bowl in the dishwasher and tells him that she’s looking forward to a bit of alone time.

 

––––

 

It shouldn’t surprise him, but fuck, he’s drunk.

 

Finnick has always been able to drink like a fish and the most he’ll get is a gleam in his eye and a slightly diminished capacity to refrain from making as many lude jokes as possible.

 

They’d watched the game with all the normal enthusiasm but in any of the breaks Finn had practically interrogated him over his recent disappearance from society, and then, on everything about Katniss.

 

And then of course, he’d spent half an hour trying to defend why they hadn’t fucked yet.

 

As he makes his way home in a cab, it’s all he can think about. Her naked body below his, above his.

 

He imagines taking her on every possible surface in the fucking apartment.

 

_God_ , he’s drunk and he’s so fucking horny.

 

Everything inside him feels feral and desperate. He wants her so badly. He wants to push inside her, hear her cry out in pleasure.

 

He walks up the stairs to his apartment, stumbling on the steps and fumbling to get the key in the front door.

 

When he gets inside he sees Katniss sprawled out on the couch wearing only one of his t-shirts and a pair of underpants. Her fingers tease the edge of the elastic as her eyes are focused on the television.

 

She notices him and shoots a lazy smile his way.

 

“Have you been smoking weed?” He sniffs the air. The green scent reminds him of his days at university. It’s unmistakeable.

 

She nods slowly.

 

“Are you drunk?”

 

He rests a hand against the wall, holding himself up. His eyes are drawn to the tips of her fingers that push further under the edges of her underpants.

 

He nods.

 

“I want you, Peeta,” she stands from the couch, saunters towards him.

 

His palm goes to her ass, shifts up her hip. Her skin is so soft. Fuck, it’s so soft. He wants her so badly, but his cock stays soft in his trousers.

 

“I think I’ve had too much to drink,” he slurs into her mouth as she leans into kiss him.

 

She tugs at the first few buttons of his shirt, smoothing her hands under the opening to feel his pecs. And then she pulls away, heads to the bedroom.

 

Confused, he follows her, faltering at the door when he sees her pull off the t-shirt and lie on the bed.

 

She moves back against the pillows, bends her knees and spreads, giving him a perfect view as her hands finally slip fully beneath her panties.

 

He watches the rise and fall of the material as her fingers slip across her folds. He wants to see more but it’s as though he’s frozen to the spot.

 

“Are you sure you can’t get hard for me?”

 

She gasps, pleasure constricting her chest as he thinks two fingers slip inside her. He lunges forward, fumbling with the rest of the buttons of his shirt and the zipper of his jeans.

 

“Fuck, Katniss,” he leans over her, situating himself between her thighs, “You have no idea of the effect you have.”

 

She thrusts up against him. He feels his cock starting to harden with the strength of her desire for him.

 

“This time,” she wraps a leg around his ass and makes him grind down into her, “I think I might.”

 

He hisses at the contact. His cock swells against her slit.

 

“Panties,” he pants, “Gone!”

 

“So demanding,” she whispers into his ear, nipping at his earlobe. But he feels her hands snake past his sides to do as told.

 

“Mmph,” he reaches down and shucks off his briefs, feels his erection become trapped between their bellies.

 

“Wanna fuck you so bad,” he leans and kisses her, rolling his hips. Her mouth feels dry from the weed, still tastes a bit of smoke and tobacco but in this moment he doesn’t care about anything but the feel of her hands gripping the muscles of his shoulders.

 

“Wan’you to fuck me so bad,” her hand slithers between them and grips the girth of him.

 

His head sags against the pillow by her neck but he finds enough energy to reach across to the bedside table and find a condom from the drawer. He thanks his sober self for not being too fucking chaste.

 

Their hands work together to slide it over his head and along the length of his erection. Once he’s sheathed he moves back down the bed so he can tease her clit with his cock.

 

“How bad d’you want me to fuck you?” He growls into her ear, just teasing her entrance with his head, pressing against her clit, gripping her thigh with his hand and pulling it out to the side.

 

She doesn’t speak, throws her head back and cries out.

 

“D’you think about me fucking you when you touch yourself?”

 

She nods her head, “Yes,” – but it’s all breathy and tight.

 

“D’you imagine all the ways I can take you?”

 

He wants to know if she’s been suffering, too.

 

“D’you dream about me fucking you as you sleep beside me?”

 

She nods, her eyes clenched tight with the torturous way he teases her clit and her folds.

 

“I think about you,” she bites out, “all the time I think about you.”

 

“Good girl,” and he sinks into her.

 

Her walls clamp around him and he groans, “You’re so fucking tight.”

 

She bites her lip and urges him on. Her body is floppy and lazy. He feels it in the way she lets him take control, lets him move her to make it feel different, _better._

 

But she’s loud and uninhibited and he thinks he might come just from the sound of her.

 

He pulls back on his knees to watch her and feels dizzy with the movement. But he keeps pumping in and out, gripping her hips to pull her down onto him.

 

He watches the way her breasts bounce with the movements, the way her head lolls side to side.

 

When he starts to flick her clit with his thumb she starts chanting, “’M gonna come, gonna come, gonna come.”

 

And then she does, shuddering around his cock and crying his name into the charged air of the room.

 

But he’s not done, so he flips her over onto her stomach like a rag doll, hiking up her ass so he can grind down hard and fast into her.

 

“Holy fuck, Peeta!”

 

“D’you like it like this?”

 

His knees start to ache with the effort so he leans forward across the length of her.

 

“Do you, Katniss?”

 

“I fucking love it,” she twists her head to the side so he can place a sloppy kiss on her lips, all tongues and no class.

 

“I wanna make you come again,” he says as he reaches a hand underneath them to tweak at her clit.

 

“I want you to come,” she says, pressing her ass back against him, “I want you to come so hard you see stars.”

 

“Nuh-uh,” he reaches up to grip the headboard and thrusts into her harder, pulls her body down on to him. She screams into the mattress.

 

“Don’t you know, Peeta?” She whimpers with the effort of speaking.

 

“Know what?” Sweat drips down his forehead.

 

“You can have me anytime,” he slows his movements as she speaks, her voice reverberating off the headboard, “anywhere.”

 

And the way she presses her ass back against him makes him think of double meanings and _holy fuck_.

 

He picks up speed and tries to hold out but the images she’s planted is brain win over and he comes with a shout, falling down beside her on the bed.

 

“That was a dirty trick,” he says to her after he catches his breath and she starts to laugh.

 

“I’m sleepy,” she murmurs, curling into him.

 

“Me too.”

 

“I gotta pee,” she rolls away, getting off the bed and walking to the door on shaky legs.

 

Now it’s his turn to laugh, “Hard to walk?”

 

She rolls her eyes at him, “Don’t get too cocky.”

 

He smiles at her, crossing his arms behind his head and splaying his legs wide.

 

Her eyes go to his now soft cock, still covered in the condom, “Clean yourself up, you jerk.”

 

He manages to wipe himself off with a tissue and throws the used condom in the bin beside his bed, but he’s feeling a little shaky himself.

 

He gets under the covers and grins, still feeling a little drunk but he can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or the sex.

 

He’s asleep before she gets back to bed.

 

––––

 

He wakes up to sunlight and groans. His head hurts, his mouth is dry, and his teeth have that fuzzy I-forgot-to-brush-last-night feel to them.

 

Not to mention the fact that memories of fucking Katniss Everdeen fill his head even before he realises it’s her naked body pressed against his.

 

“Damn,” he mutters.

 

“I hope that’s not the sound of regret,” her voice is clear and she tilts her chin to rest on his chest, looking up at him with a raised eyebrow.

 

He sighs and tilts his head away from her gaze, “No, it’s not that…”

 

He trails off. It’s far too embarrassing and if the way she’s staring at him is any indication, he’s sure she’ll laugh.

 

He feels his cheeks start to fill with colour and knows she can see straight through him.

 

“Uh oh,” she presses a kiss to his sternum, “What’s wrong, Peety?”

 

He’s got to stop the nickname thing a.s.a.p.

 

“Nothing, I just–” he rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm and yelps when he feels her bite at his nipple.

 

She looks at him innocently from her spot on his chest, but her messy, knotted hair and the dewy glow of her skin suggest anything but innocence.

 

“I wanted our first time to be special,” he finally admits, feeling the flush spread down his neck as her laughter rings through the room.

 

“Like roses and candles and shit?”

 

“Yes,” he groans, “Like roses and candles and shit.”

 

Katniss smirks and he can hardly meet her eyes. She presses another kiss to his sternum, then the bottom of his ribs. The blankets shift over her and he wonders how he can get turned on and feel this embarrassed at the same time. There’s probably some deeper, Freudian, meaning to it that he’s pretty unwilling to explore.

 

“I don’t really like roses,” she kisses the skin below his belly button and he shudders, “So it’s probably a good thing.”

 

He wants to kiss her for trying but he’s starting to suspect she might have other plans for her mouth in the next few minutes.

 

“Just candles then?” He bites out as she uses her tongue to trace a line from his belly button to the dip of his pelvis.

 

“Fire hazard,” _kiss_.

 

“What about just being sober?”

 

She pretends to ponder the question for a moment, but her fingers trace circles on the inside of his thighs and he thinks maybe he doesn’t care.

 

“Probably would have been an improvement.”

 

“Fuck!”

 

But she’s taken the head of his cock into her mouth and he can only feel sorry for himself for so long.

 

He loves the way she keeps her eyes on him as she works him with her mouth. Her tongue swirls over the head, coating it in spit before giving the length of him the same treatment.

 

Then she takes him properly into her mouth, covering her teeth and bobbing up and down his cock.

 

“Jesus Christ, Katniss.”

 

She cups his balls in one hand and grips the base of his cock with the other.

 

It’s when she starts to hum that he really thinks he’s going to lose his mind.

 

Swear words spill out of him like a reflex. Every movement of her body adds the ball of pleasure that builds at the base of his spine – the way her hair brushes against the sensitive skin of his thighs, the tips of her fingers edging towards that patch of skin behind his balls, the way her fist grips around him, tightening slightly on the way up.

 

She releases him with a pop and a gasp, “Inside, I need you inside,” and he lunges towards the bedside table.

 

She pulls the condom from his grasp and tears open the foil packet with her teeth. As soon as she’s rolled it down him, she sinks onto him, sighing in relief.

 

“I’m not gonna last long,” he says through gritted teeth as she starts to bounce.

 

“Neither.”

 

He’s mesmerised as her hand goes to her clit and she rubs at it hard, racing to meet the finish with him. He grips the backs of her thighs so hard that afterwards he’ll worry he’s bruised her but right now there’s nothing either of them would change.

 

He watches her breasts, her dark nipples stiff. He wants to suck them, lave them with his tongue, but for now he’ll just enjoy the view.

 

She comes before he does, but the feel of her clenching around him takes him over the edge.

 

They lie sated on the bed for a long while, sweaty chest pressed against sweaty chest. He traces lazy circles across her back and doesn’t care about the semen slipping down from the spent condom and across his thighs. If anything it gives him an excuse to drag her into the shower with him.

 

He feels her breath start to slow and thanks God for weekends and the ability to sleep in.

 

––––

 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Katniss laughs as she walks through the front door, “This is why you couldn’t pick me up?”

 

He’s laid out a feast on the table, everything of hers that he’s learnt is a favourite – cheese buns, lamb stew, apple and goats cheese tarts.

 

In front of the TV he’s laid out blankets and pillows in some kind of fortress and instead of candles – because he thinks maybe they _would_ have been a fire hazard, the room is lit up with fairy lights.

 

He rubs the back of his head, smiling sheepishly at her.

 

“I figured if I couldn’t make our first time special, I could at least make our,” he looks to the ceiling for a moment, heat filling his cheeks, “twenty second time something worth remembering.”

 

She drops her bag by the front door and stalks towards him, cupping his cheeks in her hands and pulling him down for a kiss.

 

“You’re ridiculous,” she tugs his bottom lip between her teeth and he presses forward to sweep his tongue into her mouth. He can taste the remnants of bitter coffee that she would have used to get through the last few hours of her shift.

 

“There are no roses, I promise,” he mumbles between kisses. His fingers flex over her waist, thumbs just brushing the underside of her breasts. But the food’s on the table and she’s going to be dessert, so he pulls away.

 

“Do you want to shower?”

 

She shakes her head no, “Wasn’t too busy today, but maybe I’ll change into something nicer.”

 

He finishes setting the table, pouring a glass of wine for them both as she rushes to get ready. It only takes her a few minutes and then she appears wearing some slinky black dress he’s only seen on the hanger.

 

“You’re so beautiful, Katniss.”

 

She ducks her head but lets him lead her to the table.

 

They eat their meal and she gushes over his cooking. Their fingers tangle and untangle across the table. He’s drawn to the way the fairy lights make her grey eyes sparkle, turning almost silver in the light.

 

It’s when all the plates are clear and their wine glasses empty that he really notices the tension that had been building between them the whole meal, an awareness of what was to come.

 

He leads her to the pillow fort and she rolls her eyes at it, but she has to bite her lip to stop the smile from splitting her cheeks.

 

He takes his time undressing her. He kisses the spot behind her ear that makes her knees weak, the pulse point of her neck, the curve of her shoulder.

 

“You’ll have to wear this dress again,” he whispers as he slides the thin straps over her shoulders, “Somewhere I can show you off.”

 

“I only care about showing off to you.”

 

They kneel amongst the pillows and he kisses her breasts, holds them in his palms and circles the nipples with his thumbs.

 

He listens to her breathy gasps, the way they get trapped in her throat as he uses the flat of his tongue instead of his thumb. He takes first one, and then the other into his mouth, worships her body.

 

His fingers trace the contours of her skin, the flesh that has started filling out around her ribs and hips. He cups her ass to press her into him. She groans at the feel of his need for her through his trousers.

 

“I think about you, always,” he says as he lays her down on the blankets.

 

Fingers tucking into the sides of her panties, he pulls them down as he presses kisses to her legs.

 

He wants every part of her to remember the feel of his lips, the sheer weight of how much he wants her. He wants her to feel him in every motion and moment, just as he does her.

 

“Me too,” she gasps, his tongue over her clit preventing her from forming any real kind of response.

 

“Al-always!”

 

He sucks at her clit and presses two fingers into her. He moves slowly, there’s no rush, no reason for them to be anywhere but right here.

 

His nose presses against her clit as he moves to lap at her entrance, marvelling at the husky, earthy taste of her.

 

“I hate it,” she cries and he looks up at her through the thatch of dark hair and across the plane of her belly, but he doesn’t stop.

 

Her eyes are on his. He watches the pupils dilate, fat in the dim light, fat from pleasure.

 

He doesn’t let her look away as he brings her to the cusp again and again.

 

When he finally lets her come, he rears back to wipe the wetness from his chin but she leans forward to grip his hands and stop him. Her tongue peaks out from between her lips and she licks the taste of herself from his face.

 

“Me, too,” he whispers once she’s done, “I’m lost in you.”

 

But the way he feels her heart thumping against his, the terrifying and delicious feel of his skin trying to burst at that point of contact so that their heartbeats might truly connect – he knows it’s not hatred. Something more like fear.

 

He’s so afraid.

 

The lie down together and for a moment just hold each other, innocent caresses.

 

Her eyes flick between his and he sees the fear inside her, too.

 

When he shifts over her, he brackets her head between his arms and smooths the skin of her cheekbones, her forehead with his thumbs.

 

She reaches for a foil packet and rolls the condom down his length while he hovers above her. It’s sort of awkward and takes a while but he doesn’t care.

 

He feels his heart thumping somewhere in his throat and can’t believe he still feels like this – like the first time.

 

When he thrusts into her, they both groan. Her legs wrap around his back to hold him close and he interlocks their fingers by her head.

 

Their eyes don’t move from each other’s as their hips roll together. It’s a constant back and forth and every time he tries to pull out to thrust back in, she whimpers, so he stays close to her, lets their joining overwhelm him.

 

After, they lie facing each other on the blankets. It’s warm in the room so they don’t use anything to cover themselves. Instead, they take in each other, the vulnerability of their nakedness in the aftermath of orgasm.

 

“I still feel it here,” she whispers, pointing to the crease of her elbow. He thinks she’s talking about the heroin and for a moment he wants to cry.

 

But she points to her shoulder, “Here,” her hips, “Here,” her knees, her heart.

 

“The way you make me feel,” she reaches for his hands and kisses his fingers, “I feel it pulse in my blood for hours.”

 

––––

 

For her birthday, they decide to invite some of his friends over for dinner. He gets the feeling that the last thing she wants to think about is what day it really is, and what she would normally have been doing. So he thinks meeting his friends will be a good distraction.

 

“So what’re their names again?”

 

He smiles and wraps an arm around her shoulder, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. She’s been nervous all day. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her care so much about an outfit choice.

 

“What happened to only wanting to show off for me?”

 

She pouts and punches his arm, “I’ve heard that your brother’s pretty cute, I’m worried I might have chosen the wrong Mellark.”

 

“Ooft,” he holds a hand over his heart, “Well my brother’s name is Douchebag so make sure you call him that and don’t laugh because he gets really self conscious about it.”

 

“Ha ha,” she reaches her hand out to the sauce and meatballs bubbling away on the stovetop but he slaps her hand away.

 

“Nuh-uh, no tasting, that’s cheating,” he crosses his arms over his chest and moves in front of the stove to block her.

 

He looks her up and down as though he hasn’t already shown his appreciation for this outfit with a very healthy dose of dining room table sex. Katniss has been wiping it down ever since, as though terrified his friends will be able to tell what happened there as soon as they sit down to eat.

 

“This whole apartment smells like sex, Peeta!” She’d called out to him, going from room to room to throw open the windows.

 

“Good!” He’d shouted in reply, “None of them will get any dumb ideas about you and that dress.”

 

“Okay but really,” she says and he struggles to remember the question in the haze of memories that mostly involve her naked.

 

“Um, Finnick’s coming and he’ll make lots of inappropriate jokes but his wife, Annie, is on some business trip and he actually loves her so don’t worry about him. Delly, my friend from school, she’ll like you simply for liking me so don’t worry about her, and my brother Douchebag, who is kind of a douche bag so it was a pretty appropriate name choice on the part of my parents.”

 

She pinches the skin of his forearm and he yelps.

 

“Fine! Since you beat it out of me, he sometimes also goes by Rye.”

 

Katniss narrows her eyes at him, “Seriously, my dad was a baker, what can I say?”

 

“Okay, fine,” she drawls but he senses the suspicion in her tone.

 

He sniffs at the air, “I can still smell sex, you better keep cleaning.”

 

“You are the literal worst.”

 

––

 

It turns out that Delly really _is_ capable of befriending Katniss the moment she walks through the door, for the simple reason that she means something to Peeta.

 

She’s wrapped in a tight hug that has the breath squeezed out of her and she looks at Peeta over the blonde girl’s shoulder with fear in her eyes. He just laughs.

 

“I am SO excited to meet you!” Delly practically shouts into Katniss’ face once she pulls away. He can see her try to smile but it comes out more of a grimace. He probably should have warned her exactly how _intense_ Delly could be.

 

The blonde seems oblivious to her discomfort, however, and drags her to the dining table where she pours them both a hefty glass of red.

 

Katniss looks at him over the rim of her glass as she takes her first legal drink. A smirk hovers on her lips and he throws her a wink.

 

Then she’s consumed in chatter with Delly, who proceeds to tell her all the embarrassing stories of Peeta from their days in high school. He might have regretted inviting her for this reason alone if it weren’t for the laughter spilling from Katniss’ lips.

 

He can handle a few of his not-so-finest moments being relived if it means seeing her this happy on her birthday.

 

Rye and Finnick arrive together and Katniss can’t seem to decide which of them she’s more terrified of.

 

But his friends have always had a knack for free flowing conversation and top-quality banter and at her first quiet, but typically sharp quip, they look at her as though they’ve found their new best friend.

 

When Peeta finally sits and dinner starts, they cheers over the table, clinking their glasses.

 

“To Katniss!” Finnick proclaims, winking at her and drawing a blush to her cheeks. Peeta squeezes her knee under the table.

 

“For being way out of Peeta’s league but letting him try anyway!” Rye finishes the toast and they all laugh.

 

He knows that Katniss normally doesn’t say too much, but with Delly and Rye and Finnick all working her over with questions he honestly thinks this is the most he’s ever heard her say out loud in one sitting.

 

He can see the sparkle in Finnick’s eye every time she throws back one of his ridiculously obnoxious jokes, and Rye appreciates the opportunity to have someone to gang up on Peeta with.

 

Delly just has heart eyes practically jumping out of her head as she realises how happy he is.

 

Because he is so happy. He didn’t know life could feel like this.

 

“I am stuffed,” Rye leans back in his chair, rubbing at his bloated belly.

 

He leans across to ruffle Peeta’s hair with a grin and a _thanks, bro_ , and he rolls his eyes at his brother’s insistence to always treat him like he’s still ten years old.

 

He sees Katniss smile at the interaction and pokes his tongue out at her.

 

“Let me clean up,” she says, standing and beginning to stack plates. Peeta’s about to say no when Rye offers to help and he figures they can use the opportunity to chat a bit.

 

Finnick and Delly move to the couch, taking the half empty second bottle of wine with them. They sit around and chat about everything going on in their lives, and Peeta tries to concentrate instead of trying to hear what Rye and Katniss are saying.

 

When they finish up in the kitchen, he raises an eyebrow at her, he wants to ask if everything’s okay. But she just smiles and he relaxes back into the couch as Rye proclaims it’s time for another bottle of wine.

 

“And maybe we should play never have I ever?” Finnick asks, eyebrows raised and ears perked.

 

“Fuck off, Finn,” Peeta laughs.

 

The bronze-haired Adonis pouts and makes an obscene gesture pointing at first at Peeta and then at Katniss.

 

“If that’s your way of asking if we’ve had sex, Finnick,” Katniss says, moving to sit in Peeta’s lap, “I’m pretty sure we fucked in that exact spot you’re sitting just this morning.”

 

Rye’s hands go over his ears with a shout of _Gross!_ But Finnick just laughs, “Nice!”

 

––

 

They’re lying in bed after everyone’s left. Even though they’re both exhausted, they can’t sleep, just lie wrapped around each other, listening to the sound of the other’s breathing.

 

“What did you and Rye talk about? In the kitchen?”

 

He feels the finger tracing patterns on his chest falter for a moment.

 

“He asked me where we met.”

 

“Oh.”

 

She sighs and he feels it warm on his skin.

 

“I told him the truth, that you saved me.”

 

Peeta stays quiet. Did he save her? He was there and he helped but ultimately Katniss made all the decisions. She chose to use clean needles, chose to talk to Haymitch, chose to come to him. He thinks that really, she saved herself.

 

“He said that one time you didn’t save someone from heroin and he thinks you’ve never gotten over it.”

 

He can smell _her_ vomit. It fills his nostrils. It’s his clearest memory from that day. The stench.

 

“He said that he always regrets letting you think it was your responsibility. That he should have tried harder to protect you.”

 

“Did he tell you who it was?” It’s not until he speaks that he realises he’s about to cry. The emotion chokes his voice, makes it crack. He feels his eyes start to burn.

 

“No.”

 

He turns onto his side and shifts Katniss so her back is to him. He thinks that if he sees her face he might not be able to do this, it might break him.

 

Her fingers twine between his and she squeezes as he takes a deep breath.

 

“My mother was addicted, ever since I was very young.”

 

“Mine too,” she whispers into the room.

 

“I found her dead after an OD in the upstairs bathroom just before I left to start university.”

 

She squeezes his hand and he kisses her hair.

 

“We never really got along, she used to throw shit at me, yell horrible things at everyone in the family. We all knew there was a problem but we couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t leave because in a fucked up way we loved her, but we hated staying, resented her for ruining everything, for being weak.”

 

He feels Katniss want to pull away, but he holds her closer to him.

 

“And then I did some course at college, I forget the exact subject, but we had one lecturer talk about addiction, and I remember I had to leave the classroom because I’d started crying. I felt like the worst person in the world. I had always blamed her for something she had no control over and I didn’t even cry at her funeral.”

 

Tears pool at the corners of his eyes and he tries to blink them away.

 

“So that’s why I do what I do, because I was never able to save her life but maybe I can make up for it by helping now.”

 

He sighs. The stench of vomit starts to clear from his nostrils.

 

“When I was eleven my father died,” Katniss says.

 

“My mum had been a nurse and was great at her job but after that she just lost it. She couldn’t function. Was too depressed to even remember she had two kids she was meant to be looking after.”

 

He feels her lungs expand with that big kind of breath you take to stop your emotions from overwhelming you.

 

“I had to grow up really fast. It was only when she started using that she joined us again in the land of the living, but she was a shell. Never really did anything but earn enough to pay the bills.”

 

Her fingers tap the tips of his in some unrecognisable pattern.

 

“One day she was so doped up when she went to pick up Prim – my sister – from school, that she didn’t even realise it had been a red light. They got hit by some truck and Prim died straight away.”

 

“When mum woke up, she asked me if Prim was okay, and when I told her it was like she decided there was nothing left worth living for and she just closed her eyes and died.”

 

“I was seventeen and the first thing I did was go home and find her drugs to see if it had been worth it, if the high was so fucking good that it was worth killing her daughter and leaving the other behind.”

 

“I was so high, and I felt so _good_ , like all the bad things in my life could just melt away. I felt _amazing_. I couldn’t even feel sad if I’d tried and when I started coming down I remembered everything was shit, that my sister, my favourite person in the world was dead.”

 

“So I went and found my friend Gale who I knew used the stuff too and tried to spend the next three years of my life finding that moment of bliss again.”

 

They lie in silence, but it’s the most intimate he’s ever felt with her. Like they’ve exchanged keys to the darkest, deepest parts of their souls and no one in the world could ever understand how close to her he feels in this moment. How protective. How protected.

 

––––

 

“Unf, Katniss,” he grunts as she lunges on him. He’s just walked through the door after a long shift at the centre and apparently she’s missed him.

 

He barely has the chance to toe off his shoes and drop his bag before she’s tugging off his scrubs.

 

“Bedroom,” she gasps into him and she presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to his skin and lips, “Now.”

 

He grips her thighs and hoists her up onto his waist. He’s lucky he knows the way because she refuses to separate from his lips. There’s something wild in her, something desperate.

 

They crash into the doorway she cries out into his mouth but doesn’t pull away, just tugs hard at his hair.

 

“Christ, Katniss,” he grunts at the pain.

 

He throws her down on to the bed and her eyes stay on him as she bounces. She curls a finger, teeth barred like a caged animal.

 

He moves to cover her, reaches a hand down to unzip her jeans. He pushes past the line of her panties, “You’re so fucking wet for me.”

 

“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” she finally says.

 

“You don’t have to wait anymore.”

 

He reaches over to his bed stand and fumbles through the drawer.

 

“Fuck,” he sighs, forehead crashing into her shoulder.

 

“What?” She’s half delirious, clawing at his back and shoving his pants down his legs with her feet.

 

“We’re out of condoms, I knew I forgot something at the supermarket.”

 

She whines, bites into his shoulder.

 

“You’re on the pill right? We can go without, just for today,” he goes into to kiss her but suddenly she’s pushing against his chest, pushing him off her.

 

“No!”

 

His eyebrows rise in surprise, “Okay, I can go down to the store now or we can just do, um, other stuff?”

 

But she’s suddenly trembling, looking at him as though he’s just slapped her.

 

He reaches a hand out towards her, “Katniss?”

 

But she moves crawls further back on the bed, away from him.

 

“How could you say that?”

 

“What?” He’s confused, trying to figure out how they went from near-wild-fucking to deer in the headlights terrified.

 

The condom?

 

“I trust you, Katniss? Everyone at the centre gets tested and we were both clean during that last one?”

 

He hates the way that turns into a question instead of a statement, like maybe there’s something she’s not telling him, something she’s done… some _one._

 

“That thing could be wrong!”

 

Her pupils are dilating and he wants to hold her, but every time he tries to reach forward she moves further away until she’s standing on the other side of the bed. She starts shaking in front of the window, the cold night air blowing over her.

 

“Katniss? It’s okay; we will never do anything that you’re not comfortable with. But if you want we can go and get tested again, just so you’re sure.”

 

She shakes her head from side to side and he sees tears start to leak out the corners of her eyes, “I’m so filthy, I’ll ruin you, I’ll ruin you.”

 

He manages to draw her into his arms and pull them both under the covers.

 

She shudders against him, huge, body-wracking sobs that break his heart.

 

He pushes the hair behind her ears, “Katniss, I love you, okay? I want to be with you because I love you. I love all of you.”

 

She tries to nod, but she just keeps crying, keeps telling him she doesn’t deserve him.

 

_Dear God_ , he thinks, _Help her. God fucking dammit help her see what I see._

 

––––

 

“Peeta?” He hears Thresh’s voice through the phone, “I think you better come pick up your girl.”

 

“Is she okay?” He’s already figuring out how he’s going to get away from work early, who he can swap with.

 

“Not really.”

 

“I’ll be there in ten.”

 

It takes him nine minutes and more promises than he cares to think about, but he gets to the café.

 

There’s only two customers in the store and they look up at him as he enters. He tries to see Katniss but she’s nowhere in sight.

 

“She’s this way,” comes the voice of tiny Rue. He hadn’t even noticed she was standing there.

 

The girl leads him out behind the counter, through the kitchen and into the back room. He still doesn’t see Katniss and for a moment he thinks he’s about to be the victim of some elaborate prank.

 

She points at the door of the closet.

 

He opens the door, shifts clothes aside, “Katniss?”

 

 

She’s huddled in a ball on the floor.

 

“Oh, Katniss.”

 

He has to do some serious rearrangement in order to fit inside with her, but he scoops her onto his lap and wraps his arms around her. She doesn’t say anything but he can hear how short her breaths are, the brink of some panic attack lying just below the surface of her skin.

 

“Shh, it’s okay, I’m here.”

 

They stay in that cramped closet for hours.

 

––––

 

The nightmares come back.

 

He starts having them, too. But they’re always the same. Always of her. In his dream, he wakes up and the bed is empty. No, not just empty… _cold_. As though she was never there. He walks around the apartment. She’s gone, she never moved in with him. She ODd months ago at the centre. That time she used new smack and he didn’t save her. Couldn’t save her.

 

He forces himself to wake up.

 

She’s there but it takes him a few moments to calm down. He feels paralysed. His heart thuds so loud against his chest he’s worried it’ll wake her.

 

But she’s there. Beside him. It’s okay.

 

And then she’s screaming.

 

––––

 

Once he sees it, he realises it’s been inevitable. But _God_ that doesn’t stop him from dying inside.

 

She sagged over the dining room table. The tubing is thrown on the floor behind her. The needle is still gripped in her fists.

 

She’s crying.

 

Snot dribbles down her chin.

 

She doesn’t notice him until he’s crouched down in front her, trying to ease the needle from her palm.

 

He tries to keep the anger out his tone, but all he can imagine is exactly this scene except she’s not breathing when he walks through the door, “You should have called me.”

 

She doesn’t say anything, just looks away from him.

 

“I just mean, what if something went wrong? I would hate if something went wrong.”

 

He hates himself when he starts to cry. He’s meant to be strong for her. He’s meant to be helping her. Not driving her to use. Fuck.

 

“God, Katniss,” he pinches his nostrils, “I just want you to be safe. I would die if something happened to you.”

 

She nods in understanding but she still won’t look at him.

 

He looks at her chest. Still breathing. He looks at her arm, there’s a little drop of blood pooling on the inside of her elbow.

 

“Come on, baby,” He reaches for her hands and she manages to stand but then sags against him. He picks her up, one arm under her knees and one across her back. She curls into his chest, hides her face in his shirt.

 

He lays her in their bed and goes to get the first aid kit from the bathroom. He realises his hands are shaking. He smells vomit.

 

He has to take a moment and brace himself against the sink. He looks into the mirror. His eyes are red. He takes a deep breath.

 

She hasn’t moved from where he placed her. So motionless that he fears she’s gone and died in the last two minutes. But her lungs keep expanding, breath after breath. He finds the pulse at her wrist. It’s slow but not worrying.

 

He tells himself to calm down. He pretends like it’s just another day at the clinic. He swabs at the blood, puts a band-aid on it.

 

He goes back to clean up the kitchen, wrap up the needle safely and put it in a plastic bag so he can dispose of it at work. He finds the baggy of white powder, considers throwing it away but instead he just hides it in a cupboard. For today. Until he knows what’s going on, what he needs to do.

 

When he gets back to the bedroom he lies down behind her, spoons himself along her length, knees into knees, her head tucked under his.

 

“Talk to me, Katniss.”

 

He stretches his palm across her belly, the soft flesh is cooler than usual. He shifts higher so he can feel her breathing. He needs the reassurance.

 

He feels her take a few deep breaths in.

 

“You know what Haymitch said? When I told him I was going to move in with you?”

 

“No,” he has to close his eyes and concentrate on not hurting anybody, “What did he say?”

 

She places her hand over his, traces the shape of his fingers where they lie on her.

 

“That I could live a hundred lifetimes, and never deserve you.”

 

He wants to kill Haymitch. He sees red flash across his vision.

 

He pulls back so he can look into her eyes, “You know that’s bullshit, right?”

 

That sliver of grey flickers away from him. But he’s getting desperate. He voice feels so thick with emotion that he can’t articulate the words properly, can’t make them pass his tongue, they’re so sticky and wet and the one time in his life he thinks words might actually be able to fix something he can’t even use them.

 

“That’s so far–” he wants to stop himself from crying but he can’t do two things at once, “That’s so fucking far from the truth it’s not even funny.”

 

She starts nodding, but he can tell she doesn’t believe him, might never believe him.

 

“Katniss, my life was just, it meant _nothing_ before I had you,” he leans in to kiss her cheeks, uses his thumbs to caress her cheeks.

 

“I love you,” he whispers against her lips.

 

She kisses him, tugs at his shoulders to pull him fully over her.

 

“Say it again.”

 

“I love you. I’ll always love you.”

 

She strips off his shirt.

 

“Say it again,” her voice cracks. She hasn’t stopped crying.

 

“Katniss, there’s nothing about you I don’t love. I love everything you are.”

 

He can’t stop crying either as she pulls him in for another kiss, as she rips off her t-shirt and pushes her pants past her hips. It all feels like goodbye and he doesn’t know how to stop it, what words to use to make her stay.

 

“Again,” she says as she grips his cock, reaches for a condom and grimaces as she rolls it over him.

 

He makes her stop for a minute, makes her look at him, “I love you, Katniss Everdeen.”

 

She clenches her eyes shut and he sees the tears press past and onto her cheeks. He kisses them away. Tastes the salt.

 

As he sinks into her – “Again.”

 

It becomes his mantra.

 

I love you, I love you, _I love you_.

 

He loves her and he feels everything inside him breaking. She doesn’t make a sound as he loves her. It’s like she’s trying to memorise everything. Her eyes skate across the curve of his shoulders, the bulge of his biceps. She kisses his jaw.

 

He moves as slowly as he can, but he can’t hold out forever. After he comes he goes down on her until she can’t hold the sounds inside her anymore, until she’s screaming with pleasure.

 

“Again,” she cries.

 

“Peeta, again,” she grits her teeth, tugs at his curls.

 

“I love you.”

 

––––

 

He wakes up to sunlight. It streams through the window and illuminates the lines of her back.

 

He traces the shadows and patterns with his eyes. He wants to stay asleep for as long as possible.

 

So he just stays still, watches her, memorises the rise and fall of her chest, the spread of her inky black hair, the contrast between her skin and his sheets.

 

She blinks her eyes open and looks at him.

 

He smiles, reaches out to twine their fingers together.

 

She lets him.

 

“I have to go.”

 

His smile falters, “I don’t want you to go.”

 

She kisses his knuckles and closes her eyes. He feels his heart start to scream, thunder in his chest, _no! NO!_

 

“Please, Katniss,” he croaks, “I’ll do anything. Please don’t leave.”

 

She reaches across and pushes his hair back, leans in and kisses his forehead, his eyelids, the tears on his cheeks. His lips.

 

He grips her hands.

 

“I have to go, Peeta.”

 

He nods but doesn’t let go.

 

“Please,” she kisses him, “I have to go.”

 

He releases her and sits up, has to turn away as she packs her things.

 

He thinks about going to the kitchen and making breakfast and realises how ridiculous the thought that he could entice her to stay with food really is.

 

“Do you need help?” He manages to say when he stops feeling like a petulant child.

 

“No, I don’t really have much.”

 

He looks back to see she’s dressed; her things are all in a duffle bag.

 

Almost six months of their lives together and it fits into a duffle bag.

 

“You don’t have to go, Katniss,” he starts, “I can leave, I can stay with a friend and give you space–”

 

She moves to stand before him, cups his cheeks.

 

“You have the most beautiful eyelashes,” she says before she kisses him.

 

“I’ll find you when I’m free.”

 

And then she’s gone.

 

––––

 

The first time he sees Haymitch, he clocks him right in the face and breaks his nose. They wind up spending a few hours in the hospital with the old man shooting him dirties over the bandages collecting blood under his nostrils.

 

Peeta hangs his head in his hands and cries.

 

“Come on, boy, let’s go get you a drink.”

 

They sit in a bar and Haymitch gets a coke and he gets a pint of beer.

 

“How could you say that to her?”

 

The bastard sighs.

 

“How could you let her leave?”

 

They don’t say anything else.

 

––––

 

Johanna comes into the centre and he sits across from her.

 

“You look like shit,” she says.

 

He hasn’t slept properly in weeks, not since Katniss left. He narrows his eyes.

 

“Says you.”

 

She’s practically skeletal, skin almost yellow, pock marks across her cheeks.

 

Johanna laughs and he thinks she looks like she’s about to murder someone when she does it.

 

“I saw your girl,” she says as she gets started, flame under the spoon.

 

He has to place a hand over his heart to stop it leaping out of his chest.

 

“Where?”

 

“Can’t say.”

 

He growls.

 

 “She made me promise,” Jo shrugs, raises an eyebrow at him, “Can’t break a promise with your best girl friend.”

 

“Yeah, right. I feel like she’s the only female you even talk to.”

 

“As I said – _best girl friend_.”

 

He sighs and smacks his head against the wall.

 

She looks at him as she starts drawing up the liquid mix through the filter.

 

“She said if I saw you to say she’s okay.”

 

He breathes, “Okay.”

 

––––

 

He drags himself out his nightmares each morning and finds there’s no relief in waking.

 

She’s still not there.

 

His bed is cold.

 

He walks through the apartment and there’s no trace of her.

 

It’s like she never even existed.

 

––––

 

“Hey, bro, how’s it going?”

 

His friends have clearly starting taking turns to check on him.

 

Today it’s his brother’s turn.

 

“Same old,” he’s lying on the floor of his lounge room, staring at the ceiling.

 

He’s taken to working an extra two days at the centre – what was his weekend.

 

He figures if he’s going to up his odds of seeing Katniss he’d prefer it to be there than at the hospital. It comes with the added benefit of not constantly thinking about her while he’s working.

 

His friends think he’s going to run himself into the ground but he feels more exhausted after a day alone with his thoughts than a twelve-hour shift.

 

“Why don’t you come down to dad’s place this weekend? Raff will be there too and we can do a family dinner or whatever.”

 

He contemplates rejecting the offer for a minute. But when he thinks about it, he could really use a hug from his dad. So he agrees.

 

––––

 

His dad still lives in the apartment above their original bakery, so the whole place has this constant smell of fresh bread. He’s sure that all their furniture has been there so long it wouldn’t matter what happened you would always lie on that sofa and feel as though you’d just turned yourself into a sandwich.

 

It’s comforting.

 

His dad pulls him into a hug as soon as he walks in the front door and he feels like maybe things will be okay in the comfort of his father’s arms.  

 

“It’s good to see you, son.”

 

His father ruffles his hair, “You too, dad.”

 

––

 

For the first time in three months he begins to feel normal, sitting around his old family dinner table with his brothers.

 

His father tells them all about the goings on in the bakery, the latest gossip from their small town.

 

Rafferty tells them he’s planning on proposing to his girlfriend and they all start shouting their congratulations around the table, reaching over to grip his shoulder or muss up his hair.

 

“Bet she says ‘no’,” Rye grins over a forkful of steak and mash potato.

 

“Shut up you dick head,” their father cuffs him upside the head and all the brothers laugh.

 

“Yeah, at least I’ve met someone willing to spend more than one night with me,” Raff shoots back at him with a smirk.

 

“I’ll have you know that with at least one of the girl’s I’ve slept with, it’s happened more than once.”

 

Their father rolls his eyes, “I can’t believe I raised a boy like you.”

 

Peeta doesn’t say too much, just lets the conversation wash over him like a wave in the kiddie pool. It’s comforting.

 

––

 

After his older brothers have gone to bed in their old rooms, he stays up with his father and drinks hot chocolate.

 

“Rye told me about Katniss,” he finally broaches the topic.

 

Peeta sighs and lets his head sag against the back of the armchair.

 

“Yeah,” his lips tilt downward.

 

“I think it was brave of you to let her go.”

 

His eyebrows furrow in confusion.

 

“I knew your mother was using and that it was getting out of control, but I forced her to stay. I told her if she left you’d all be devastated, that she’d miss her children too much, but really I was just terrified of the prospect of being a single father.”

 

Peeta stares at the marshmallows in his hot chocolate, lifts one out to suck the milk from it.

 

“Maybe if I’d let her go she would have found herself, gotten better? Maybe not, maybe she was always too far gone. But at least I would have saved you boys, you would have been free of what she did to you.”

 

He looks across at his father and suddenly realises how old he looks. The hair on his head is mostly grey, thinned. The lines on his face are deep.

 

 “I’ll never forgive myself for what you went through, Peeta, but you still managed to be a better person than I ever was.”

 

He thinks about Katniss.

 

_I’ll find you when I’m free_.

 

He’ll wait for her. However long it takes. He feels the ache of it in his soul; he knew it the first time they kissed. She’s the only one for him.

 

––––

 

He gets home and finds that baggie from her last day. He throws it in the bin. If she comes back, she’ll be free.

 

––––

 

 

“Hey,” she wavers on his front door step like she’s not quite sure she’s welcome.

 

He leans against the jamb and crosses his arms with a smile, “Hey.”

 

“Um,” she rises up on to her tiptoes and sinks back, “Before I forget and before you either tell me to fuck off or like, whatever, you want. As in you can choose. As in. Yeah. Well, before that happens, I just wanted to say something.”

 

He nods and offers to let her in, but she shakes her head and stays in that spot on the edge of his existence.

 

“So after I left I had a few weeks of y’know, heroin, stuff,” her lips start to purse and he can see a flush spreading across her cheeks.

 

“But when I was using, it was like, it sucked? And it wasn’t just because it wasn’t like the first time. I realised it’s because nothing made me feel better than being with you.”

 

She tugs at her braid and finally looks him in the eye.

 

“And then when I was in rehab I guess I realised that you’re kind of my dragon and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to spend as much of the rest of forever feeling normal. With you.”


End file.
